Vision, Clarity, Passion, and Fulfillment

I love vision. A vision for the future of how you want your life to unfold and having an idea of that final destination. I love clarity. Affirmations that what you are working for today is progressive and is leading towards that vision of the future. I love passion. I love knowing that what I am working towards is my choice and is something that I see as necessary to help strengthen myself and help lead to the betterment of society.

I do not like being told what to do. I do not think any of us do. I am my own boss, which is a beautiful thing. I still look for direction from people that I respect and I am a big believer in constructive criticism, but in the end I want people to respect that I have the final say on which direction I’m going to go. We have one life to do what we love and I am going to go in the direction that I want to go.

Our passion, belief, and positivity towards our dreams has to be far greater than the people that believe and have doubt that you will ever make it. Do you have vision? Do you have belief in that vision? I read a quote that was something like create your own dream and work towards it or you will be working towards the dream of someone else. I hope that you’re not in a position where you are working towards fulfilling the legacy of another person.

Everyone tells you that you need to go to school and get a good paying job. I think we need to reevaluate this and look at the term “good paying” as something that is not just monetary. What you do should be something that gives you personal satisfaction and fulfillment.

It feels great to make a profit when selling a book knowing that something they may take out of my story may help them. Although I feel just as good giving the book away to someone fighting through similar circumstances that I had to fight through knowing in the back of my mind that I may have just given them something that could be life-changing. The greater profit to me is when someone tells me that I inspired them or gave them hope whether or not they bought the book or it was given to them.

When I speak I am always able to see a face in the crowd that feels like they have a strong personal connection to what I am saying. I love hearing laughter from the same person that originally was in tears. They see and believe that this was no tragedy after all. This was just the start of something greater.

At the end of each speech it comes time for questions. This is the time that I love more than anything. I can tell how engaged people are by how many hands are raised. Many times the person does not even have a question, but just a comment where they praise the amount adversity that I have had to overcome. This gives me a great sense of pride and it is a reminder that I need to keep going in the right direction. It reminds me that my work is far from finished.

My story and my testimony is far from over. That is why it is great to have a vision to keep myself moving forward. I have a close friend and mentor that has a terminal illness. It is heartbreaking to know that his incredible journey will inevitably come to an end. Although the more I thought about this, I started to think that really all of or living with a terminal illness. No one knows if we are going to die today, tomorrow, or many years down the road. Death is inevitable for everyone so we should live each day knowing that we have unfinished business and know that there is only a limited amount of time for all of us to get it done.

I challenge you to create vision, to have clarity in that vision, and to fill your life and that vision with passion. Start today by evaluating your life and think about whether or not you are going in the direction that will leave you with a sense of fulfillment in the end. We only have one life so start today.