How to make your vision for 2014 a reality!

I love this time of year. So many new projects, start-ups pushing forward and freelancers touting their wares. It fills me with a mix of trepidation and excitement. Like a great fantasy movie full of promise, new possibilities, and some stuff people don’t really believe is possible.coaching_nation_vision

There are a million tips out there, endless lists and loads of advice so why aren’t we all cyborgs, conquering human and technological feats way beyond even our most expansive desires.

Easy, the answer lies not in lists but in the bespoke, in you, what is unique to you and your skills. Sorry there’s no escape from that one.

As you might guess, with most subhuman activity, there is some metal involved. Though here we’re talking ‘mettle’. Courage and strength but that’s pretty obvious. All successful freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners are warriors. In fact anyone who realises a vision is a warrior.

So how to do it?  Here are two big clues! Yup, that’s it, just two. (There are many more but I’m going to keep things easy because getting a vision off the ground is hard enough.)

1: Eye for detail

Envisioning spectacular worlds. To take an idea from the sock drawer, or a company to the next level and turn it into a reality you need to know how to look, what to look at, what others are looking at and when to stop looking. You’ve guessed it: your vision is actually about vision in all respects, metaphorical and otherwise.

But it’s not enough to say these things so here’s where the science fiction ends and the reality sets in. It takes skills. If you are not sure where you are on the optical skills scale or how to attain these skills, here’s an exercise to get those juices flowing. Have a look at the little orange image above on the right – what do you see? There’s no right or wrong here, what’s interesting is what you are thinking and doing. How many elements have you found? Ok – I’ll tell you there are 55 elements to that image, (Well that I’ve found). I’ve listed 45 at the bottom of the page. If you want to cheat take a look now. That’s fine, as now you know that you need two additional people in your team. One that likes to look carefully at the detail and one that loves divergent thinking!

2:  Divergent thinking

Innovation that makes an impact. Let’s take the Indri lemur and not because of its similarity to Darth Vader in colour but because of how in the 60s the Natural Historian David Attenborough discovered the key to turning a vision into a reality. This was cutting edge innovation that changed the way we see the world, only a few years before it was the stuff of science fiction.

For days and days Attenborough followed the sound of these incredibly sensitive, agile, fast and isolated lemurs in Madagascar, with a then state of the art recording device, only for them to elude him time and time again. He was almost on the brink of giving up when he stopped the pursuit of his project in its tracks and decided to communicate with the lemurs via his recordings. He stayed put and played their language and they simply came to him!

I love this metaphor because it teaches us so much about what’s important – the impact your vision makes on others. It also teaches us the importance of knowing when to stop and rethink.

There will always be an element of science fiction to our visions, a bit of suspended disbelief or fighting consensus reality but to make it achievable, an understanding of ourselves, an eye for detail and above all an understanding of our audience or consumer, (or in this case, lemurs), is what’s needed for it to end up in a future that works beautifully for you and others!

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Image when upright:

  1. House
  2. A doorway
  3. A door knob
  4. A pathway
  5. A birds house
  6. A triangle
  7. A rectangle
  8. A sad character person
  9. A frame
  10. A gift tag
  11. A Chinese man
  12. Eyes
  13. Another eye
  14. An eyebrow
  15. Another eyebrow
  16. A mouth
  17. A nose
  18. A nostril
  19. A sleeping person
  20. A road
  21. A white background
  22. Three little chips at the bottom of the house
  23. Orange
  24. Blue
  25. A series of lines
  26. 14 corners
  27. Letters
  28. Dots
  29. A web address -:)
  30. A hole
  31. A roof
  32. A hole in the roof
  33. An arrow
  34. A circle
  35. A tunnel
  36. Pencil lines
  37. A slanted line
  38. Two windows
  39. The tip of a mountain

Image when horizontal:

  1. A road
  2. A T junction
  3. A roundabout
  4. A car
  5. A bend in the road
  6. Part of a vaulting box

 Let me know if you find the remaining 10 – [email protected]