Why Vision and Not Provision is our Greatest Resource

• Why is it that a large percentage of people do not save?
• Why is it that an even more alarming percentage of people (world-wide) do not read after they are through with school?
• Why is it that a great percentage of people have poor nutritional and health habits, and yet they want the best out of their lives?

Lack of Vision

I will tell you why. We do not have vision that we can be totally committed to. There is no other reason that you can tell me that can convince me otherwise. All the reasons (and excuses) that someone will give as to why the few scenarios above are pervading will ultimately lead back to one thing: lack of vision.

• We do not save because we do not have a strong financial vision
• We do not exercise because we do not have a strong health vision
• We do not read because we do not have a personal development vision
• We do not create personal weekly timetables because we do not have a compelling vision for efficiency and productivity

In this Century, It is Mediocrity To Be Vision-less

Can you see what kind of mediocrity it is to not have a vision? In fact we are so tied up in the mundane that we do not realize that we are in a cycle of repeating actions that do not add value to life overall. If you analyzed the lives of most people, you will end up with something like this:

• Wake up each day and find something to do in order to buy clothes, pay rent, buy food
• Improve our lives each day by getting better jobs or new financial steams so we can move from survival mode to comforts.

We seldom look up from our daily activities and ask ourselves this question:
Wait a minute…why in the world am I doing all these? Where am I headed with this? In the end, would it matter that I spent my entire life on this kind of a lifestyle?

Why Legacies Are Not Being Built

That is why with that kind of a focus, not so many legacies are being built. There is no legacy in surviving and seeking comfort. None at all. But do you know what I have found out? It is easier to live a vision-less life because vision is always for the distant future, while life today screams for gratification of our bodies and souls.

In other words, our daily activities are geared to respond to the most pressing daily needs and wants. Why are you going to work today for example? So that you can earn some money and pay bills. Right? And that is the same reason why someone else is looking for a job. Our purposes are seldom past that level. We have it warped in that we think that vision is attained progressively. We think that the more our financial muscle increases, the more we can now start looking for vision. Nothing can be further from the truth.

What Vision Is

Now, vision is not to be confused with desire, need, wants and wishes. Vision is much greater, more compelling and far reaching than these things. For example, my financial vision is not to have “x” amount of money at the end of the year in my accounts.[ictt-tweet-inline] My financial vision is pegged on what I want to do with the finances [/ictt-tweet-inline]to:

• Improve myself
• Grow
• Make the world a better place

Most people do not have this kind of a vision. For most people, money is a resource to make them comfortable. They want more cash to:

• Build a better house
• Get a better phone
• Get a new or better car
• Eat in better and fancier restaurants

There is nothing wrong with the above if they are subject to the big and compelling vision as an example given above.

Start from Here

[ictt-tweet-inline]The way to go is finding out where to go before starting to go. [/ictt-tweet-inline]In other words, vision ought to be attained first before we can start going. Jesus said, “You count the cost first” before starting a major project. Sadly we do not do this. We seldom use spreadsheets, pen and paper to do this kind of stuff. We try to figure it all in our heads as we go. Partly it is because we think that the most important thing is the provision…the money…the resources. We think that without these, we never need to think about a vision. We would be eternally wrong. Three quarters of the word “Provision” is “vision”.

Let me give you an example:

One of Lawrence’s dreams is to build Life Signatures Universities across Africa. These Universities will focus primarily on excavating the “craziness of potential” that God put in people. There are two ways of approaching this. First, I would wait until I get a plum job in a government parastatal and start earning enough money and get enough connections to bring this dream to pass. In doing so, I will be a waiter. The second thing is that I could sit down and document the process of getting there backwards till today.

That dream will crystalize into my daily activities of today such as having this blog. Remotely, it is contributing to the overall dream. If I never had that dream, chances are that most of my daily activities will not be focused, structured and centered around any vision: all I would be doing is to fend for myself and my wife and my kids…go through that process for a whole lifetime and faithfully disciple my kids and their kids through it. Sadly, that is what is happening all over the world today.

The Importance of now

[ictt-tweet-inline]The focus we have in the now is well executed to the degree that we have acute clarity of where we are going in the future.[/ictt-tweet-inline] That is why vision is critically important not just on a national level, but even at a personal level.

Very many people are waiting for the government, the spouse, the boyfriend/girlfriend or the environment to change so that they can do something for themselves. This is pure lack of personal vision and ambition. This leads to stagnation, lack of focus and eventually it leads to a life that does not impact as it was intended to.

My mentor Dr. Mike Murdock puts it this way:

“There is nothing as torturous as to wait for someone else to change so you can succeed”

So the important question to ask today is this: What is the importance of my daily activities? Of what value do they have in the larger picture? In fact, the more important question to ask today would be: What is my vision?

What is yours? And how are you serving it today?