Your Vision

VISION by Despair.com

I really like the sardonic humor of the good folks at Despair.com. They have a fun way of looking at motivation from a totally unexpected view. Whenever I think I'm getting a bit too full of myself, I turn to these folks.

The idea of having a vision for your future is just that, a vision. If you want to have success but combine that vision with all of the things you believe will go wrong...they probably will. I sometimes think of it as getting what you ask for.

If I want to be a speaker in front of hundreds of people, but keep telling myself I can't do it. It is likely that it will never happen for me.

If I want to have a great wife and family, but keep telling myself that no woman would ever want me. It is likely I will never meet a woman that does.

The way we speak into our own lives has a huge impact on what we can accomplish. Does it mean that if I ask for ten million dollars in my life, will I get it? Maybe yes, maybe no; but it will put you on a path to towards it.

I think of the story the actor/comedian Jim Carrey tells says quite a bit about the power of believing in oneself. Jim appeared on the Actors Studio with James Lipton and was asked about writing a 10 million dollar check to himself:

JL- When you were struggling personally and professionally, did you write yourself a check?

JC- Yeah, I made myself my check which was just basically you know, 10 million dollars to Jim Carrey for acting services rendered, dated Thanksgiving 1995, and that was uh, 1990. I gave myself five years to be one of the most successful working actors, to be given the best material, and the best scripts- things that people would never expect in a million years that I could do.

JL- What did you do with the check finally?

JC- I put the check in my fathers pocket in his casket because it was his dream too and he followed me the whole time and it was kind of a completion of all that. He saw The Mask, he saw what was happening to me, and I felt like it was ya know, it was his as well- so I’d give it to him.

Jim was able to write that check and would have been able to cash it. But if he hadn't believed in himself, he never would have come close. The check would have been worthless.

The only way you will ever get to that place is believing in yourself. Know that you can be that person, achieve that thing or reach that place in life by believing in your vision.