CREATE Your Future | 5 Powerful Strategies for Vision

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today we're going to talk about 5 ways to create an incredible vision for your life. As you watch, if there's something somebody says that really resonates with you and inspires you, please leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well.

Peter Drucker said that if you do not you do not have a vision to be a world leader when you start your business on your kitchen table, you'll probably never be very successful. So if you're starting your business on a kitchen table, imagine you could be a world leader. And then you ask the question, well, if I was the world leader in my field, how would I be different from today? How would my company be different from today? We were just talking earlier about Steve Jobs and Apple Computer. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started out in a garage. With an idea to put together pieces and make a little Apple computer that people could have at home. Bill Gates of Microsoft started off with this idea that if they could make it usable, you could have a PC on every desktop. Everyone's heard about that. That was his vision, a PC on every desktop in the world. When he said this in the late '70s, everybody said he must be crazy. Who— the heads of IBM were saying, There's no reason for anyone to have a computer at home. There's no reason for anyone to have a personal computer. And within a couple of years, they were literally avalanched out of the business because you find that everybody wanted a personal computer. The only question was the technology to build it and the programs to operate. Today, if you don't have a computer, you're living in the Stone Ages. People— your telephone is a computer. You have an iPad, you have a computer at home. You have a— So you start thinking of if your business was world-class, if you were world-class, how would you be different from today? And then here's the key. This is the key. Take the first step. The first step is always the hardest step because it forces you, like a chick breaking out of an egg when it hatches, the first step forces you to break out of your comfort zone. And the comfort zone is so strong that probably 90% of people are held back from their full potential all their lives because of this vice-like comfort zone. And when you take the first step, the only way you can do it is break out. And suddenly you see the second step and the third step and the fourth step. And then as you take the steps, your self-esteem goes up and your self-confidence goes up and you become more creative and you start to think of all kinds of ideas. And people say, "What has gotten into you? I mean, what are you smoking? Because whatever it is, you should share it with the others." And so this is the difference between top people. Is they have a big idea of what's possible and they take the first step.

3 things I want you to do to nurture your vision. I want you to affirm it every day. Affirm it every day. And don't affirm it as, "I'm trying, I wish, I want to." I am. Let me hear you say, "I am." I am. I am. I am.

I am.

I am. Every single day. I AM is the creative force of the universe. Whatever you attach I AM to, you will become. You know how people say, "I'm broke." Or, "I'm single." No. I'm waiting for my ideal mate to present himself to me in a way that I recognize. Whatever you attach I am to. I'm confused. No. I am awaiting clarity in this moment. So affirm your vision every day. And just because somebody else can't see your vision doesn't mean that it's not a powerful vision for you. Here's another key for you. Never judge your clarity on how other people respond.

Did you hear me?

They gonna say, "What you doing? You crazy. Why you doing that? You can't do that. Who told you you could do that? Who do you think you are?" I love that one.

"Who do you think you are?

Me?" Affirm your vision. Clarify your vision. Know what you're doing, why you're doing it, and how you're doing it, day by day, moment by moment. And sometimes the how only shows up on a need-to-know basis. Don't wait for the how until you start pursuing your vision. You understand? Don't wait for the how. Sometimes you just have to walk blindly. But if you just do your vision every single day, putting one foot in front of the other, committed to your desires, being obedient, walking through your fears, the vision will unfold much grander than you could have ever even imagined. Imagined or asked for. So this is what I say to support your vision. Instead of begging for it, pleading for it, pray, "Oh God, please.

Oh, please God, please.

Oh God, please.

Please God, please.

Oh, hallelujah, hallelujah." Be still.

Let your daily spiritual practice be one of stillness and listening. Listen for the instruction instead of begging for the direction. Listen. Be still.

Is you want to do a dream collage. I'm going to show you exactly what a dream collage looks like. A dream collage is basically you open up your journal and you get a few free pages, okay, and then you take all the images of your ideal life or your dreams coming true and you glue them into this, into your journal, so you get this collage of all these perfect things that you want to have happen. Now, what's the primary principle? It's this: the subconscious mind runs about 95% of your life. Only 5% of your life or what you're perceiving is really— it's 5% is your conscious mind. Most of what's happening in your life right now is being run by the 95% that's sort of the invisible world, which is your subconscious mind. And the real key is the subconscious mind operates through pictures. So, you want to use that to your advantage, and I've got, for example, I've got Architectural Digest. We're going to rip out some pictures here. I'll show you exactly what I mean in a second. We've got the Rob Report. So, let's say a lot of people, they like nice cars. I've got a picture of a Fisker here I'm going to show you. You know, big house, a lot of people want a big house. So, I'm going to show you exactly how to do a dream collage so you can get this done really quickly so you start running pictures through your subconscious mind and believe it or not, okay, once you start training your subconscious mind to focus on the visual life that you want, then your performance starts to follow. Because your performance is always aligned with your subconscious mind. Again, only 5% is run by your conscious mind. So I want to show you the dream collage in action. You know, I took a Travel and Leisure, and what I did was I took a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Let's say the Eiffel Tower is one of your places to visit. You know, you've got your journal and you've actually got your magnificent obsession statement, and you glue it into your journal on one page. And then let's say you're into yachts, so I got this from I ripped out another magazine, from another magazine, The Robb Report. So if you're into yachts, let's say, I mean, dream big, right? You put your picture of your yacht in here. Then I took another magazine, Architectural Digest. A lot of people love big homes. It's a meaningful goal to a lot of people. And I took out a picture of just a beautiful modern home. You know, you can have a look at it right there. And that goes into your dream collage. Literally, you paste the pictures of your ideal life. Maybe it's your fitness level, maybe it's the car you want to drive. Everything goes into this dream collage. You look at it every morning when you get up, you look at it every evening before you go to sleep. And really what it's all about is this: ever since we've been little kids, we've picked up all these mess— all of this messaging from our parents, from our teachers, from our peers, from society, and that literally forms that 95% that we're not conscious of. So, the 5% is what we're conscious of, but it's the 95% subconscious part of our brains that is really running the show. And we have all of these fears and all these doubts and all these messages that we've picked up about what we can't do. Don't dream like this. You could never have this kind of car, or you could never run this kind of business, or you can't change the world. And literally, we go through life and we wonder why we can't make our dreams come true, and we blame it on the outer world, and we play victim, but the reality is It's our own selves. We are our own saboteurs in so many ways. And this dream collage with a magnificent obsession, the first way that I beat procrastination, will really help you shatter your chains so you get big things done.

We have, as humans, we have something that no animal has. And what it's called is imagination. And what imagination allows you to do, it allows you to see it before it actually happens. That's right, I'm talking about the greats like Albert Einstein. E equals MC squared. That's right. Einstein Einstein said he saw it in his mind long before it happened. It was in his mind's eye before it was physically tangible. And so the first thing I need you to do for me is I need you to live in the forward. What do you mean by that? What I mean by that is I need you to go 10 years into the future, 20 years into the future, and I need you to see yourself actually becoming the person you want to be. And you need to do me a favor. I need 30 minutes a day. I need 30 solid minutes a day of you actually sitting down. I want you to block the whole world out, put some music on, some classic Classical music, right? The piano if you need to. I don't know what you need to listen to, but I want you to take 30 minutes. Go in the closet, go in the basement, go to the library, go into a room alone. And I want you to take 30 minutes and I want you to imagine. I want you to take 30 minutes and I want you to live it afuera. See, the problem is I'm talking to some of you guys, the problem that you're having is you're living in the future and you're living in the present. And you keep talking about the mistakes, you keep talking about the past, you keep talking about your trials, you keep talking about your situation. And I want you to know that everybody that's ever been great Everybody has had an obstacle to overcome. They've had a barrier that they had to climb. There is no individual who's ever reached success and he didn't have to go through an obstacle or a barrier to get there. So do me a huge favor. I need you to live in the future. I need you to go in your future every single day. I need you to go in your future. I need you to see what you're going to be. Listen to me. What you are to be, you are now becoming. And so you got to use your imagination and your imagination has to take you beyond the pain. Your imagination has to take you beyond the trouble. Your imagination has to take you to the next level. Remember what I said? Nowhere in the world does success come before work but in the dictionary. And I want you to know that those people like E.T. that you see right now that's successful, it just didn't happen. That's right, it didn't happen. The first thing we had to do, we had to see ourselves there long before it happened.

Vision is a disclosure of an unseen reality. Vision is a disclosure of an unseen reality. I know y'all thinking, wait, wait, wait, shiny bald-headed black man, that doesn't make sense. You said, "An unseen reality." If you— how do you have a reality that's unseen? That doesn't make any sense. It sounds like an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp. Okay, good, good, all right. See, that doesn't make any sense. How can you have an unseen reality? Y'all, it is the vision that connects what can be to what is. Write that down. The vision connects what can be to what is. As the leader, the influencer, I want you to understand this principle. Write this down underneath: where the head goes, the body follows. Where the head goes, the body follows. So what I mean is this: you can't become negative, because if you get negative, they'll be negative. If you stop believing, they'll stop believing. If you can't see the vision, they won't see the vision. Look, folks, I know right now it looks like we don't have anything, but hey, the vision is that this room is gonna be packed out. I know that we still have more empty seats right now than we have occupied, full seats, but that's alright because the vision is that we're gonna be able to pack this out and behave, and we're gonna have to move to a bigger room. See, what you got to do is learn how to speak what is not as though it were until it is. You are the keepers of the vision. The vision lies, if nowhere else in your organization, it's got to lie inside your heart. It's got to be the thing that you are the most passionate thing about.

Life will pay. Whatever price you ask of it. You know what's interesting? You gotta ask intelligently. In the Bible it says, ask and you shall what? Yeah, pretty good formula. You ought to look into it. But you know what? It says, ask and you shall receive, but I'm sure it meant ask intelligently. I'm sure that's what God meant. I'm sure he didn't mean bitch and you will receive, whine and you will receive. I don't think that was the instruction. Now, if you were going to ask intelligently, there might be 5 elements to that. Number 1, you'd have to ask specifically, wouldn't you? You wouldn't ask in a general way. People do it all the time. They go, "I want more money." Fine, here's a dollar. Get out of here. Very often you're getting what you're asking for. You're just not aware of how general you're asking. Clarity is power. The more clear you are about exactly what it is you want, the more your brain knows how to get there. Your brain is a servo-mechanism. It's like a bomb. Those bombs, those missiles, they have a servo mechanism. So if the target moves, it knows what the target is. It follows it. Your brain, when you condition it, knows exactly what to go for, and it'll find a way to get there. Do you ever buy a certain outfit or a certain car and suddenly see that car outfit everywhere? How many ever had that experience? Say aye. How come that car outfit's everywhere? It always was everywhere, but now you notice it. And the reason is because there's a part of your brain called the reticular activating system, the RAS. That part Part of your brain determines what you notice and what you don't notice. Your brain spends most of its time trying to make sure you don't notice, because you'll go crazy if you notice everything. But when you decide what's most important to you, your brain goes after it. Everyone I know who's successful builds what I call an RPM plan. An RPM is built on the metaphor that the way to get from where you are to where do you want to go the fastest is you got to build power, like in a car— RPMs. And the R stands for— they know the result they're after. They know what they want precisely. If you don't know exactly what you want, or you let yourself get beyond that into something general, you're not going to achieve it. Clarity is power. You got to know the specific result you're after. What do you want? If you can't answer that question right now in your personal life, in your body, in your relationships, in your finances, in your spirituality, then you're not going to be as fulfilled as you want to be. Today we're going to have you answer one of those questions at least. The second part of it, you got to know P, why you're doing it. Because you know what? You may get a big goal. Somebody says, "I want to make a billion dollars. I want to bring peace to the earth." Why? Because as soon as you come up with a goal, all the obstacles show up. Unless you've got enough emotional drive to break through that, you're never going to discover what it really takes. So you got to get yourself past that. And the way to get past that is have enough reasons. Reasons come first, answers come second. This man did not know what he wanted. He did not have enough reasons. To ask intelligently, you got to ask specifically. To ask intelligently, you gotta know why you want it, have enough drive to make it happen, enough juice to make it happen. If you don't have enough reasons, you will not make it happen. And the M is what is your massive action plan? What is gonna get you to actually follow through? 'Cause the first plan's not gonna work and the second plan's not gonna work, so you better have enough plans that if the first two don't work, you still got something else. Otherwise, you're gonna be having excuses why it didn't work. So asking intelligently requires that. So if we're gonna be extraordinary in our results, we gotta be in an extraordinary state We gotta know what we want, we gotta go use it.

For me, creating an incredible future and vision is asking two questions: why and how? The first is the why, because it's so important. You have to have a why. Too many people don't have a why, and that's why their dreams never happen. You may say, I want to be a millionaire, I want to buy that car, I want to go travel the world, but if you don't have a really powerful why, it's never gonna happen. Just having some big goal that you think is aspirational, you want to shoot for is not enough. You have to have a deep and powerful and strong why behind it. If you look at the people who've gone on and done great things with their life, created an amazing vision and went out and achieved it, they had a powerful why that even when it was hard and they were slogging through and it looked like there was no hope, they continued moving on because they still had a powerful why to make something better. And then even when it got easy, even even when they could have quit, even when they could have retired because they had all the money in the world or all the money that they needed, they kept going. They kept pushing because they had a strong why. Their why wasn't addressed yet. And so if you want to do something great with your life, you need a powerful why to motivate and inspire you. The second question is the how. Asking yourself how is an extremely powerful question that most people don't do enough of. And as an example, I was talking to a colleague here at Toronto Dance Salsa, and I was proposing something that we'd never done before, a brand new idea. And all he was coming back to me was with all the problems with it. "Oh, it won't work because of this, because of this, because of this." That's great. There's problems with anything. I get that there's problems. You could poke holes in the plan all day long, and that's what everybody else is gonna do. But if we had to do this thing, if this was our goal and we had to go out and do this, With all these problems, how will we accomplish it? And once you start thinking about the how, it puts your brain on fire. It aligns you in the right direction. Because if you're looking at whatever world that you want to create, whatever dream scenario for yourself, the life that you want to live, if all you see are the obstacles that are in your way, that you don't have the connections, or you don't have the money, or you don't have the experience, or your country sucks, or the government socks or whatever it is, all these obstacles that are in your way preventing you from getting to where you need to be. If that's how you see the world, you're never gonna get there. You could have the greatest vision in the world, but if all you see is obstacles along the way, then you're never going to get there. Where if you start asking yourself, how will I do it, then you start to align yourself down the right path. So having a strong why and then start asking how, in my mind, are the two most most important questions that you can ask to get that vision for your life to actually become reality for you. So I made this episode of Believe Life because The Unequal TV asked me to. If there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next edition of Believe Life, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know what you thought of this episode, what points meant the most to you, resonated the most with you, what change are you gonna make in your life or your business after watching this video. Please leave it down in the comments below. I will join in the discussion. I'd love to see the impact that it's having on you guys. I also want to give a quick shout out to John Peters. John, thank you so much for buying my book. It really means a lot to me. For those of you watching, you want your chance at a shout out in a future video, make sure to pick up a copy of the book and email in your receipt so we can keep track. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.