How To Bring Your Vision Into Focus

This is Part 11 in a series on vision. Catch up with the earlier installments here:

Part 1. Part 2. Part3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10.

How Much Do You Need to See to Move Forward?

When do you start moving forward with your vision?
How clearly do you need to see your path ahead before you take the first step?

We cannot fully explore the topic of vision without a discussion about trust.

Sometimes we get a clear download of our vision. A full-color picture with clear directions.

Other times we get a glimpse. A brief look. A partial view. Not quite enough to go on.

Or is it??

In our culture, what we know and what we feel are discounted without proof. evidence, examples. This conditions us to believe that we cannot trust our intuition and what we know.

What we see is not always real, yet this is what we often rely on. Seeing is believing.

We wait for the “full picture” to emerge before we make a decision or move forward.

How much time and energy do you invest in trying to see the full picture before you move forward?

Waiting for the full picture before committing to a course arises from our fundamental need for certainty.

But certainty comes at a cost.

The time and energy invested in seeking clear direction, the potential for new insights and experiences that we lose while we’re waiting for the full picture to download.

How Vision Comes Into Focus

Since September 2018, I have been living home-free. This is the manifestation of a vision I had in 2015.

I never know how long I’ll be in a place or where the next place will be. This adventure is not for the faint of heart.

A consistent practice for me is to move forward without the full picture. Sometimes I only have a glimpse. Sometimes not even that much.

It is an exercise in trust, a daily practice in getting comfortable with being in the mystery.

The more I surrender, the more I experience the synchronicities of life. Every experience informs my vision, helping fill in pieces of the picture.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t get caught up in the questions or the belief that I need to have answers before I move forward. There have been times I have found myself clinging to what I know, forgetting that what is comfortable today wasn’t even in the picture a short while back.

I spent years conditioning the doubt and skepticism muscles in my mind. It served me in my career as a lawyer; it helps me now when I plan strategies. It’s going to take more than 18 months to rewire those impulses.

A certain level of doubt can help us be proactive in preparing.

But it doesn’t always serve. If we get too caught up in trying to see the full picture before we take the first step, we can become paralyzed from moving forward.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

Have faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

Trust that the picture will come into focus while you’re moving forward.

A glimpse is enough to go on.