What Will Your Answer Be?
I subscribe to a marketing newsletter from a guy named Jason Stapleton. His daily emails are ultimately designed to get me to purchase services from him, which I may do someday. But, daily, his emails intend to provide value. His email started today with this: “What would you say is the greatest sin someone could commit against themselves? Suicide, maybe? Intentionally destroying your body with a bad diet or other vices? Both would be high on my list, but not #1.”
What would your answer be?
He then continued: “In my mind, it’s a life spent conforming to someone else’s ideals.” I love that answer, but I think I would have said it differently. In my mind, it would be not to strive for what I am called to be. For me, living Life fully is all about striving and becoming. Striving can lead to growth. It is the effort. Becoming is the result. Waking Up is the result. We all have something we are uniquely qualified to be and become. For most of us, it is often not apparent. Even when we have a hint or general sense of what that might be (or clarity on what it is not), honing in and finding it, finding it exactly, for you at this moment in time in your life is often more obscure than clear. But Jason goes on to point out (my words now) that it is too easy to allow cultural pressures to insidiously subvert our journey if that journey deviates from those influences that we are immersed in constantly. Cultural pressure always pushes us toward conformity and the attendant mediocrity. What we are called to become is never mediocre but special, precious, unique, and wonderful. We must exercise constant vigilance for it to appear and blossom. We have to work at it. But we must do one thing more. We must also have a vision for where we are headed, what we wish or are called to become.
So, let's establish a highly effective way to think about this. Life isn’t static, and any vision you have or might develop isn’t static either. As James Clear has said, It is better “thought of as a process of envisioning”, rather than having a vision. So, you don’t sit down, figure out your vision, and be done with it. It's more like you draft something as a starting point and have it evolve with you. Your life experiences will shape and form whatever you started with, continually refining and sharpening the focus. As you grow, even as the focus sharpens, the vision expands. (If you are “growing,” you are expanding (and waking up). Your envisioning will simultaneously reflect it and feed it.)
Finding the right vision for you isn’t automatic. To learn how to start (or refine what you already have), head over to my Substack to read on!