Life can be hard. You may not be all that you can be right now or in a good place for yourself. Maybe things are not that bad, but inside yourself, you know that things can be better. Like an old song once said, “If you don’t like what you got, why don’t you change it?”*
Any possible hope for a change for the better starts with realizing it. Then you need to figure out what aspects of your life can be better and starting to take the steps to making the changes that you are looking for. Knowing what you want or need is crucial. Visualizing your better self is a critical component to achieving the goals that you desire.
Change The Program – Change The Channel
If you are unhappy where you are in life, it could be you are not creating the right vision about yourself. Take a moment to think about recent thoughts that you had. Were they negative thoughts or feelings like you’ve hit a roadblock? Are you thinking that you are stuck and that there is no way around or out of the situation that you find yourself in?
If you only see negative things around you and this is what you continually focus on, this is the truth that you create for yourself. This is what you end up training your brain to accept as a your truth. You need to start now to change your thoughts and repaint the picture in your mind.
Shift your focus to a life that you want or a person that you want to become. If you want to have a life similar to an idol of yours, read about how that idol has become a success and use that as a guideline to help you accomplish something similar.
When you create a positive image within your mind, it will set up neural pathways to help you reach your goals. The more you reinforce this mental image the more pathways will be created. If there is information available online that can help you with your vision, use it to your advantage.
When you have determined your vision and the steps you believe will help you get there, continue to imagine that vision. Do this on a daily basis. Your brain will get so used to this vision it will become a subconscious process.
This is not to say you can’t alter your plan or your vision. There may be something you thought you wanted, but as you progress, you find this not to be the case. There is nothing wrong with that. If this happens, create another vision and move on from there. Your brain will form pathways for this new vision.
If your vision is fine but the plan is not getting you where you need to be, don’t be afraid to make changes with it. Plans are guidelines only. They can be changed as needed. This can happen when new information comes to light along the way, information which wasn’t available when you first got started.
Your Vision Will Draw Criticism
Be prepared for criticism while creating this new vision for yourself. It is yours and yours alone. People may not understand what you are trying to shoot for. Hold to your beliefs and prove them wrong. Your critics are not the ones who have to live with the vision you make for yourself. You will find when you reach your goals those same critics will suddenly be on your side. They will even claim to have been there for you all along. It’s annoying, but that is how people behave. It’s not worth the aggravation. Just move on with your vision and let them think whatever they want.
It may even be best to keep your goals and visions to yourself. For one thing you can minimize the negative feedback that you may get from those around you. Generally speaking, people can be adverse to change. If the people around you are use to you being a certain way or doing certain things and you start changing them, they will notice and they may intentionally or not act against you.
When you start making changes for the better and your circle of people see this it may bring to their attention the flaws in their own life. Change is hard and they may rebel against your changes as they do not want to make the effort or cannot make the effort to change their own life.
As well, by telling other people what you are up to, what your goals are, you may trick your mind into thinking that you have already achieved them. By saying out loud what your goals are, our brains can be fooled into thinking that we have already arrived at our destination.
The Power Of The Mind
The power of our mind and the reinforcing of our own thoughts can come from just saying them. And our mind does not really care if what we say is actually true or not. As the old saying, goes, “tell a lie often enough and you will start to believe it”. This is how our mind works. First a thought becomes solidified with speech and then cemented by the actions we take.
This is how we create habits for ourselves – First we think it, then we say it and then we do it. But as indicated by the old saying, just speaking about something often enough can be all that it takes to solidify something in our mind. Again, our brains can start to believe what we are saying even if what it is that we are saying is true or not.
This is the power of our mind. It is a great power and it needs to be handled responsibly and with control. And this is why making the time to create a vision for ourselves, for our future self is so important. It cannot be stated any more simply than this: We need to know what we want to become. We need to see it – We must envision it.
And, of course, we need to take the actions that need to be taken to get there. This is how we create our internal belief of our success. It starts with the thought of what we want, creating that vision in our mind and then physically taking the steps that we need to take to get there. Thoughts. Words. Actions. It can be that simple.
One trick that that our mind plays on us, that is a good trick is that when we are consciously searching for the solution to a problem, our mind often works behind the scenes to come up with the answers that we are looking for. How many times in your life have you wondered to yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that before?” This is our mind working for our benefit for us to be able to get to those “eureka” moments.
The trick is to have the our brains working on looking for the good answers to the “good” problems that we are facing.
Having a vision in place will give our mind something useful to work on.
Conclusion
Having a vision of what it is that you want from life is a critical component to achieving the success that we seek. Without having a vision – without having your vision, how will you know what you want and when you even get there?
Make the time to figure out what it is that you really want and envision it in your minds eye.
By doing so you set a target for your mind to be working on in the background while you are doing your day-to-day activities.
If you need help figuring out what topic or aspect of your life that you need to create your vision for can be the main topics that we cover here on BAM!
Topics To Consider For Your Vision:
- Dealing With Addictions
- Careers, Business, Entrepreneurship
- Family, Children
- Marriage, Relationships, Dating
- Mental Health And Wellbeing
- Personal Finance
- Personal Growth And Development
- Physical Health.
There should be at least one of the topics that you can take on to create your vision for improvement in your life. We all have some aspect of our life that could be better. And if you have more than one, start with one. Once you get the routine and habits in place to deal with one of them, you can start your vision for another aspect of your life.
- There is always room for improvement.
- As we age our priorities change.
So, regardless of where we are in life, we should always have a vision of our future that we are constantly working towards.
There is no time like the present. Start now.
A cautionary word. There is no end to this. If we are successful with manifesting our vision, then we can take a moment to pat ourselves on the back and then say, “Great!”, ”I have achieved what I have set out to do!” And then we simple need to say to ourselves, “Okay then, what’s next?”
*The “old song” referred to at the beginning of this article is Trooper’s, Raise A Little Hell, released in 1978. It would be worthwhile for you to listen to and read the lyrics of this song. Check it out:
Be A Man – Do The Right Thing. Be Conscious. Be Aware. Create And Work Towards Your Vision For Yourself.
BAM!!! Be A Man! Do The Right Thing.
Be the DtRTy Guy!