The Vision

The Vision

In my second blog I presented the model for self motivation:

SELF MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).

It is read "self motivation is a factor of vision, successability and environment." This equation means that any positive impact on any of the factors on the right will result in a positive impact on the left. It’s like a law of nature, human nature.


I explained in recent postings what the third factor, environment, means. Now I want to explain what the first factor, vision" means. When you understand what each of the factors means, you will be able to create your own ways of increasing each factor and thereby increase and maintain your self motivation.

When I think of the factor vision, the word I think about most is potential. When I was a boy I was not particularly driven. I did well in school, but not exceptionally well. Some parents would have been satisfied with good, but not my mother. She wasn’t happy with good, because she knew that I had a lot more inside of me than just good. She know I was coasting. She would always scold me, “You’re not working up to your potential.” I knew she was right, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I wasn’t motivated to work up to my potential. And so I didn’t.

I know my mom had my best interests at heart, and I believe now (years after she passed away it occurred to me) that she didn’t want me to make the decisions she had made. I now believe she felt she hadn’t worked up to her potential, felt bad about it, and she wanted to spare me from similar feelings. Telling me I wasn’t working up to my potential was the only way she knew to stop me from suffering the same fate. But it didn’t work. Telling me I wasn’t working up to my potential didn’t help. I already knew I wasn’t working up to my potential. So what was the problem? Why wasn’t I motivated?

The problem was I had nothing to be motivated about. What I didn’t know then, and neither did my mom, was that in order to be motivated I needed a worthwhile pursuit. I needed something to feel passionate about. And if I didn’t feel passionate about something, I needed to spend some time, maybe lots of time, finding something I was passionate about, something that was worthwhile to me. I needed to find my vision.

Vision is an image of yourself that is special, ever so much more special than you already are. Vision is who you were put on this planet to be. A visual image that resonates with me when I think about vision is an acorn. The vision of an acorn is an oak tree. All that potential is in that little seed. But it also symbolizes something else with vision. And that is that vision is not what someone else is telling you to be, not what society says you should be, not what is practical for you to be. Vision is what you are, deep down inside, but which you haven’t yet brought fully into your life.

Vision is who you were meant to be.

In my next posting I will talk more about vision, and, if you aren’t yet aware of your vision, I will give you some strategies to help you find out who that marvelous person is.