Iyanla Vanzant defines vision as an inner knowing where dreams are cultivated, saying without it people perish. Evan Carmichael shares how he visualized his salsa studio's future, including unlikely events like celebrity classes, and stresses that entrepreneurs must believe in their vision despite external doubt.
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Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is Have a Vision.
Over to you, Iyanla Vanzant.
Without vision, the people perish. When I say vision, I'm not talking about an outer gazing. I'm talking about an inner knowing where you allow the the dreams and the hopes and the imagings to play out in your mind. You must have a vision for your life so that you don't get sidetracked by things and people that are not going in the direction that you're going. Write it out and then imagine it. Feel it. Allow the vision to grow. And I always say that when you have a vision, it means that you are pregnant with possibility. And this is the one time when men can get pregnant.
So what do you think?
I think having a vision is one of the most important things that should be on anyone's mind. Because in order to achieve what you want to achieve in life, you really gotta plan it out mentally before you do it. Like if you look at some of the people who accomplished some of the most impossible tasks, it would have been impossible without a huge vision that they had. I mean, take Martin Luther King, for example. He had a vision for equality. At the time, that was an insane vision. No one would have ever thought that we would have equality between the black people and the white people in America, but today it's almost that type of racism is completely absurd nowadays. And it would have not been possible if he hadn't pursued that vision. And in order to pursue a vision, you must come up with it first. So that's why having a vision is really important to me.
I like it. This guy's in high school.
I like it.
I think as entrepreneurs, we're really good at having vision. Just I think in general, I think entrepreneurs entrepreneurs have a vision for something that we want to create. We see the world a different way. We're typically good at that. I think the key thing that separates it is actually believing in the vision. And actually believing that you can make that world happen. You may wake up and one day feel like super motivated, super pumped, like this is what I'm going to do. And then the next day you wake up and it's like, oh, I can't do that. That's way too big. And so believing in it, feeling it like it can actually happen. It's something that's really hard to do. Like feeling in your heart and knowing that something is going to happen before it actually happens when everybody around Everybody around you says that it's not gonna happen, you're the crazy one. You're the crazy person on the sidelines thinking, like, why am I so different than everybody else? Like, even as I make these YouTube videos, we're doing it at our Toronto Dance Salsa headquarters, we're doing them all, there's people walking by down inside. This is gonna get to the point where there's gonna be an audience here, right? I already see it happening, there's gonna be people lining up every week waiting to watch the show. Now there's nobody, right? People are watching in and looking at what are these crazy people doing? But it's gonna be there, right? I mean—
One guy watching right now.
One guy, well, and we met because he was walking by from school going to the store next door and said, hey, I know you from YouTube, right? So it's like, it's starting. But it's gonna be much bigger. And if I talk about that, then people think, ah, you're crazy, that's never gonna happen, right? Taylor Swift is gonna come do a salsa class with us here at Toronto Dance House, right? Ah, you're crazy, that's never gonna happen. I believe it, like this is going to happen. I'm gonna will it into existence. This is what entrepreneurs do. And so I think, I think most people may not be great at having a vision for their lives, in terms of like general public. I think entrepreneurs, we're the subsegment where we do have a vision for something we wanna create, but I think it's then just fully believing in it, breathing it, actually understand that this is something that will happen even though nobody else thinks that it can happen. I think that's the difference. When you get to that point where it doesn't matter what anybody else says, you just know it's gonna happen and you're gonna make it happen, That's when it actually starts to happen. You don't just wish for it to happen, it actually becomes a reality.
Exactly. I think most people don't realize that you can mold your life instead of just asking permission what you can do. Whether it's getting a job, getting married, and anything else, you really have control over your life.
High school. I love it.
Yeah.
So the question of the day today is: What is your vision?
What do you want to achieve within the next 1, 2, 3, whatever you want to call it? Leave it below.
I like it. Leave it in the comments, we'll join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and we'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
