Are you living your past, or becoming your vision of the future?
It's a question prompted by a fabulous podcast from Lisa Haneberg where she interviews Bill Strickland, author of Make the Impossible Possible.
Bill grew up in what he describes as a very bad inner city community. Today, he is the President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation, an organization that blends business and social change.
During the interview, he talked about something his art teacher in high school said to him that would have a profound impact on his life. "You don’t have to be a reflection of your environment exclusively. You can be a reflection of your vision of the future."
Be a reflection of your vision of the future. I love that! What if we started making decisions and living our lives like that future has already happened, and the ripples of that vision are reaching back to us. What would we do? What wouldn't we do? Who would we strive to be?
The thing I love about the idea is how it turns the conventional way of looking at life on its head. We often give so much power to what has happened in the past, and what our current "reality" looks like. The result can be a little like walking in gumbo - sticky and slow-going. Maybe even completely stuck.
Being a reflection of our vision of the future, on the other hand, lets us focus on the potential. It is also a way to bring that dreamworld of the future (which can too easily remain always somewhere in the future) into the reality of today.
If who I am and what I do today is reflecting this future, what does that look like? Where am I at odds with that future? What steps can I take to bring myself back into alignment with the future?
What if you committed to living into your vision? What would you do more of that you're already doing? What would you change? What would you do differently?
Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM
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