Where you are today is the result of all the choices and actions you have made in your life.
– Oscar Wilde
In this article, I will help you clarify your personal vision, to better surpass you!
Since this is an important subject, I decided to split it in two.
This is his first part.
Are you builders of cathedrals?
A long time ago, in the Middle Ages, a pilgrim made a long journey to a place of healing.
This pilgrim was very wise and constantly wondered about life and himself.
One day, he approached a career and saw that several workers were working there.
"Hold on," he said to himself, "why do not I go and ask them what they are doing? "
He walked towards the workers who were carving the stone of the quarry to make blocks.
He asked a first worker, "What are you doing? "
The worker raised his eyes and answered him immediately, without much excitement, "I cut the stone, do not you see? "
Slightly disappointed with this answer, the pilgrim left the worker to question another.
To the second worker, the pilgrim repeated his question: "What are you doing? "
With a huge smile and a tone full of enthusiasm, the worker replied: "I am working on building a cathedral! "
This response warmed the heart of the pilgrim who found that despite his difficult and monotonous work, this worker was happy.
He had a vision and was aware that his work went beyond his one person.
Thanks to his personal vision, he made his life more interesting.
Many of you may already know this story.
I did not invent it: I drew from the popular wisdom of small stories that I adapted to my purpose to inspire you.
You will find others according to the next articles.
What can we learn from this little story?
that that's the meaning we give to our life that drives motivation and determines what we can expect.
The two workers did the same work.
They cut the stone.
However, the second had given an exciting meaning to his work because he was interested in its purpose.
You look like these stonecutters. If you limit what you hope for life, you get exactly what lies within those boundaries.
If you give yourself the goal of simply paying your bills each month, you will live without much enthusiasm.
You will not want to get up every morning …
You will look like the first stonemason who lacks vision.
Often we just react. We do our daily activities without thinking too much about it.
We act without concern for the role our activities play in our lives or where they lead us.
Many people are therefore in great distress: they do not find meaning in their actions and do not realize themselves.
As famed psychologist Abraham Maslow explained, the need for self-fulfillment is felt strongly when other needs are met (physiological, safety and esteem needs, for example).
Where does this distress come from?
It comes from the fact that few people decide to do what they would really like to do.
Here's how Maslow defines self-actualization:
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he wants to find happiness. […] [Il s’agit du] desire for self-realization, that is to say the tendency of the individual to become actualized in what he is. This tendency can be formulated as the desire to become more and more what we are, to become all that we are able to be.1
Do your activities really allow you to know yourself and achieve yourself?
The purpose of this book is to help you advance on this unique path of life.
For its part, the objective of my book Who am I ? is to help you get to know yourself and develop your self-esteem in balance.
If you have a vision of abundance, you will get a lot of life.
And your confidence, your inner security and your life satisfaction will increase as you move forward.
Your personal vision: your dreams with a timetable
It is easier to be stonecutters than cathedral builders.
Why that ?
Simply because it is easier for the human being to focus on the present and the past than on the future.
We have trouble thinking in the long run because it takes some effort.
But the effort is worth it!
We associate meaning with everything we do.
However, being convinced that we have control over what we do and about our lives is essential to motivate and move us forward.
This conviction corresponds to the notion of place of control (internal-external control or Locus of Control, in english) developed by psychologist Julian B. Rotter2.
He observed that people behaved very differently depending on whether they thought their performance depended on themselves or not.
Here is the difference:
- Place of internal controlThose who believe they control their actions are more likely to realize themselves, to tolerate delays in fulfilling their desires and to develop a long-term vision.
- Place of external controlThose who believe they are in control have lower goals, become more discouraged and less motivated.
The concept of self-efficacy refers to that of place of control and will prove very important in our quest for personal fulfillment.
Self-efficacy has been developed by Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura3, internationally recognized for his theory of social learning.
Unlike the efficiency we have seen in this article and that is the ability to actually achieve a goal, self-efficacy is to believe that it is possible to achieve a goal.
So, the responsibility you take for your results and the vision you give to your life increases your motivation and guide your daily actions.
They feed your place of internal control and your self-efficacy.
How to equip yourself with an exciting and motivating personal vision?
To give you an exciting personal vision, think first of all about what's important to you, what makes the difference in your life.
Your vision helps change you from within.
It forges a meaning that nourishes your actions, motivates you in the long run and helps you persevere.
But with what will you forge your vision?
With all the dreams and goals that you caress.
You can also think of your goals as dreams with a timetable.
Where does this curious definition come from?
Because your dreams have always been exciting and lead you to accomplish what enriches your life.
Unfortunately, you have probably learned to suppress your dreams or consider them impossible.
At best, you may think that you will realize them at retirement, if you have enough time, energy and money …
How sad !
Have you already made resolutions at the New Year?
Probably. 😉
Have you managed to hold them?
Maybe not … (And me either: the only resolution I managed to make is that of no longer making resolutions at the New Year!)
In fact, the majority of people who take resolutions do not realize.
Why ?
Because they realize that they stopped working there only the following year!
If you had made resolutions every month, you would have had a much better chance of achieving them.
Ideally, think about your goals every week or even every day!
It will also prevent you from getting discouraged.
Instead of only seeing what you have to do in one year (a real mountain!), You will come back to the activities you have to do every week and every month.
Each step will eventually lead you to the top of the mountain …
It is here that Napoleon Hill's expression that a goal is a dream with a timetable makes perfect sense.
If you think of your goals every day and do concrete actions to achieve them, you know that you are moving forward.
And when you know that you are moving forward, motivation is there!
If you take a wrong path, you can also correct the shot.
Obviously, your dreams must remain achievable, otherwise you will lose motivation when you fail.
But this "realism" should not prevent you from expecting great things!
Because it is also not realistic to believe that you can only hope for what is below your potential!
As you will see, the more you will realize yourself and the more results you will get will take on a magnitude that you would have thought unrealistic auparavant.
For example, in 2005, I was doing my first lecture in front of a small audience.
In the years that followed, I gave a lot more performances and founded Anima conferences and trainings that brought together dozens of excellent speakers.
Who knows what I will do tomorrow?
I do not write that to boast!
Of course, I'm proud to have done all that and I value myself, but I will never have more (or less) value than anyone.
Each person has a fundamental value that no one can take away.
Yet, I have not always had so much confidence in myself and I would have been the most surprised in the world (I swear!) if I had been told that I would do all this a few years ago!
This example illustrates the importance of staying open to what this unlimited growth can bring to your life.
You can see your dreams as real goals that you can achieve.
But not trivial goals, like paying bills every month, although paying bills has some use …
The goals you give yourself must feed your vision.
They must help you accomplish.
This is the reason why you can give yourself goals in the short term, long term, very specific goals and more abstract ones.
The more goals you have, the more your vision will be rich.
The more your vision is rich, the more results you will get.
This context will allow you to easily resist failure without depressing, as new goals will constantly nurture the positive sense of your future and your motivation.
Of course, your goals have to go in the same direction, otherwise you risk scattering and not getting results.
We will come back to this in the articles that follow.
It is also necessary that your goals correspond to your values, to what you find really important.
In other words, your actions must not be motivated by negative dynamics such as competition or jealousy.
Nor should you determine the meaning of your actions to be admired or to relieve yourself of feelings of insecurity.
All of these external landmarks that we use to define ourselves often give negative results.
A strong and deep vision to encourage internal security comes from inner values and landmarks to ourselves.
Such a vision increases your knowledge of yourself and your satisfaction in life.
It directs your personal realization through your activities and makes your dreams possible.
Your vision must feed your deep conviction to fulfill, to live a life that will make a positive difference for yourself.
We are all creative beings.
Hence the importance of using this potential and steer it in the right direction!
decide to go beyond you!
It's very pretty all that. A clear vision and dreams with a timetable help you move forward.
But what is the spark that ignites the fuse and makes your life a success?
This spark is the strength of conviction.
And what is conviction in a context of self-realization?
This is a deep belief related to what you want to achieve.
It implies to believe that you are able to succeed.
Conviction unleashes your desire to achieve your goals and supports your efforts to achieve it.
I often had the pleasure of giving lectures and training on motivation and self-realization.
These topics are very popular.
During these events, I noticed two types of diametrically opposed attitudes on the part of the participants.
First attitude: The majority of the audience is pleased with the new tools and reflections that help improve their lives and work.
Second attitude: However, some participants become very negative when they think that their life does not satisfy them and that they do not make efforts to improve it.
These people have an opposite conviction, that they can not change anything.
They close up and become disempowered instead of mobilizing their energy to live the life they dream of …
They lack the strength of conviction.
Take from real decisions, tough decisions!
This tremendous force of change we all have depends on our ability to make decisions.
But beware ! I do not talk about soft decisions that we do not follow actions. In that case, it's just a wish !
And wishes, that's what we do most often:
- " I would to change job "
- " I would losing weight "
- " I would to have better relations with others »
- " I would this, I would like that"…
A real decision is irrevocable. When you decide to improve your life, you really do it.
If you decide that you are saving and investing to create true financial freedom, you must really decrease your pace of life, save more and invest that money effectively.
It is not enough to have a vision. Still need to be ready to do the necessary to achieve it.
Otherwise it remains only a wish …
That's why it's so important to nurture your conviction to improve your life and convince yourself that your goals are worth it. really the trouble.
A person can give himself a thousand goals.
But if she does not believe in realizing them, nothing happens.
She will only talk about it …
And this syndrome of the big speaker is unfortunately quite widespread.
Many of us dream, talk, but we do not really do what we need to really achieve.
This difference is essentially in the conviction to improve our life.
Dissatisfaction with certain dimensions of our lives is a good source of conviction that helps us change things.
Sometimes you have to suffer a lot to finally take the decision to change things.
Realizing that we only have one life to live also reinforces that belief.
Personally, I even developed a certain sense of urgency to live.
This feeling motivates me to take concrete actions to improve myself every day.
It's the conviction that makes the difference in your ability to make your dreams a reality.
To succeed, you will have to be ready to suffer!
Oh ! What a horrible subtitle. Did he write that well? F
is he one of those who engage in sadomasochistic practices?
Rest assured ! 😉
On the other hand, yes, suffering is part of the equation: to succeed, we must suffer, at least in the beginning.
And this suffering can take many forms:
- Working long hours rather than resting can be painful …
- Do not spend the money you save and invest can be unpleasant …
- Take risks and the idea of being able to fail is scary …
- Exercising and changing your bad eating habits is hard to live with …
In short, whatever the initiative, it is rare that it is not accompanied by some suffering.
So as you see, you have to be really convinced you want something to get it.
So you have to correct right away the idea that you can get a lot of life without effort, scratching your navel nonchalantly …
But the good newsis that this suffering gradually disappears as we go into action, and it is replaced by results, motivation, dreams that come true!
A vision of the future that goes with the vision of oneself
If you want to improve something deeply in your life, you must also make sure that your vision of yourself supports you.
If you are convinced that you can not succeed, you will have difficulty convincing yourself to achieve.
In this way, if you want to stop smoking, you see as a non-smoker in its own right.
And a person who does not smoke never take from puff to a cigarette.
If you want to become more punctual, dismiss the notion of delay in defining what you are.
Arriving late is simply not an option …
You must know that you are changing, that you are improving, than you become this new person who corresponds to what you want and who behaves as such.
No one is born a smoker, no one misses punctuality at birth.
We learn most of the bad habits that make life difficult for us.
So, to feed the strength of your conviction, you must see yourself as if you had already achieved your goals.
When you make a decision to improve yourself, conviction makes that decision irrevocable.
If you give yourself the option of failing deep down, you will fail.
As long as you do not have the real conviction that you will succeed and that you will not return to your old habits, you will fail …
Alain: the strength of conviction
It is always more convincing to see how the strength of conviction can enable us to achieve great results.
I have already had the pleasure of presenting you some of my personal successes through my site. These successes make sense to me, but they do not necessarily mean anything to you.
I am neither better nor worse than anyone.
I am simply myself.
So I only told you about these successes to show you that if I am capable of it, you are capable of it too!
Moreover, I am still surprised to see all that I get from life thanks to my work, my initiatives and my conviction.
Is not it fantastic to recognize how lucky we are and to know that these results come from everything we have built believing in our dreams?
It is gratitude, that is, the ability to recognize how lucky we are to be who we are and to get what we have.
Gratitude helps us to take advantage of the present moment, to stop complaining and to enjoy the satisfaction of what we get from life! (Gratitude is one of the good habits positive psychology has identified as a source of happiness!)
In this regard, I would like to share with you the experience of Alain, a person I know.
His strength of conviction has sparked my interest.
Alain did not have an easy or pleasant past.
He was unhappy, he had a low self-esteem and did not know how to improve his life.
Over time, he had accumulated excess weight and weighed more than 170 kilograms (374 pounds).
In short, he was tired of this kind of life.
One day, he took matters into his own hands.
When he agreed to take responsibility for the results he did not like in his life, he gave himself the power to build his future.
When I knew him, he had already begun to make a revolution!
Alain's conviction was so great that he managed to lose nearly 90 pounds in one year.
More than half of his weight!
He regained his health thanks to his conviction, without undergoing surgery.
And he maintains that weight by the strength of his will and the good habits he has taken.
But that's not all.
Alain started to develop his own business.
In a few years, his annual revenues have gone from $ 8,000 to over $ 200,000.
Today, he is the father of a little girl and he is happy with his wife, with whom he has just bought a pretty house.
He continues every day to make his dreams come true.
What Alain shows through his work is that we can live the life we dream of, no matter what our past.
It will not be easy, but you can come from a poor family, you may lack confidence and esteem in yourself, that's not what will prevent you from succeeding.
From the moment you give yourself the right to dream and believe in yourself, you develop your conviction, you take action and you begin to really realize yourself!
To go further, here is a detailed article that will help you find your way.
If you liked this article, know that it is from my book Unlimited growth. You can get it in ebook version to read it in full.
References
- Abraham H. Maslow, Self-realization: from motivation to fullness (or book link if you are in Canada)
- Julian B. Rotter, (1966). "Generalized expectations for internal versus external control of reinforcements". Psychological Monographs, Vol. 80, number 609 in full.
- Bandura, A., (2007), Self-efficacy: The feeling of self-efficacy, Paris, De Boeck.
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