A Clearer Vision

“I never learned anything by talking.”

These simple words with a powerful meaning changed my life in a profound way. A little over ten years ago, a good friend who was excellent at building business relationships was explaining his formula for successful networking. But his incredibly effective formula was not a formula at all. It had only one element.

“Listen to hear.”

I will admit that I have always been a chatter. Anyone who knows me personally will understand what I mean. But those thoughtful words,

“I never learned anything by talking,”

changed me. I became painfully aware of the number of times I cut others off, butted into someone else’s thought, finished another’s sentence, and honestly, even spaced out when their story became a little long-winded. (Judging by the glazed over expressions when I tell the long version of a short story myself, I don’t think I’m alone in this behavior.)

Lately, I have been praying for an alien invasion. (Hang in there! I promise I'm not going off track!) I love SciFi movies, so in my imagination, the invasion is in vivid living color. Dozens of dark, heavily armed ships break through the ominous cloud cover with laser beams zapping.  Our fellow humans are desperately running to escape the deadly onslaught. As the crowds rush headlong toward the nearest cover, stopping only to pick up those who have tripped and fallen (why does somebody always fall down?!?), the calvary arrives. We pull together as a team to ward off the invaders and save our planet. Together, we are triumphant.

The more I think about it, though, we don’t need aliens.

We only need to listen—to seek to understand.

When we open ourselves to appreciate others, we learn that, even though we disagree on some issues, we are more alike than different.

Now on to a happier topic, Jacky Vimislik and I have been at it again! We developed a new program called A Clearer Vision. Visioning is a practical way to dream our way toward a better future. But this is not a typical vision boarding course. We have added a twist. Because we believe in the power of visioning, we have created videos intended to walk you step-by-step to a clearer vision of what you desire your life to be. Then, we’ll meet on Zoom on January 28th at 7:00 PM EST to construct our boards and share our hopes and dreams as a group. We believe our dreams more readily become reality when we pull together in support of each other. We hope you will join us. Click here for the details.

So, now I have a question for you…

“What was the last thing you learned by talking?”

Let’s listen more, talk less, and work together to envision a better world. We can do this.

We hope to see you on January 28th.