Visionary Goals Quotes

Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance - often visible to us, but invisible to those around us.

Introspective souls are often tormented by their passionate visions. This is because visionaries see what shall be and wake up to what is. However, if you couldn't see a glimpse of the city lights while stranded in the forest, how would you ever know to walk in that direction? Sometimes, your vision can't be put into action, until you gather the learning experiences, along your journey first.

Speak Life: You are loved. You have purpose. You are a masterpiece. You are wonderfully made. God has a great plan for you.

Goals doesn't leave you like men, goals wait, they wait for their achievers.

Risk is the clue that our dreams are both real and great.

Sight is seeing what's there, vision is seeing what's possible

We may propose many plans, let's but remember that God can dispose our plans, propose a new and better ones and impose them on us!

Start today creating a vision for yourself, your life, and your career. Bounce back from adversity and create what you want, rebuild and rebrand. Tell yourself it's possible along the way, have patience, and maintain peace with yourself during the process.

I used to think that the topic of positive psychology was happiness, that the gold standard for measuring happiness was life satisfaction, and that the goal of positive psychology was to increase life satisfaction. I now think that the topic of positive psychology is well-being, that the gold standard for measuring well-being is flourishing, and that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing. This theory, which I call well-being theory, is very different from authentic happiness theory, and the difference requires explanation.

Having a grand, bold goal was useless if you didn’t have the ability to tell a compelling story about how you’d get there.

Anything not a part of the vision is division

Sadly, I put my dreams to bed long before they ever had the chance to get tired.

There's no point in being committed to a vision if you're not equally committed to making it a reality.

You may have the greatest vision, plans or goals as you may term it. You can call it Vison 2020, Vision 2045 or whatever. But remember, not work is done unless a distance is covered!

Selfish Dreamscapes If you have a dream, as you should, relish in being selfish about building every passionate aspect of it. The crowd of spectators and consumers will still be exactly where you left them... gossiping about everybody else's dream but their own.

I can see clearly my visions.

Dreams are ideas where the collar has been removed and the leash has been thrown away.

d. In designing your organization, remember that the 5-Step Process is the path to success and that different people are good at different steps. Assign specific people to do each of these steps based on their natural inclinations. For example, the big-picture visionary should be responsible for goal setting, the taste tester should be assigned the job of identifying and not tolerating problems, the logical detective who doesn’t mind probing people should be the diagnoser, the imaginative designer should craft the plan to make the improvements, and the reliable taskmaster should make sure the plan gets executed. Of course, some people can do more than one of these things—generally people do two or three well. Virtually nobody can do them all well. A team should consist of people with all of these abilities and they should know who is responsible for which steps.

To weigh three hundred pounds. What devout vulgarity. It seemed a worthwhile goal for prospective saints and flagellants. The new asceticism. All the visionary possibilities of the fast. To feed on the plants and animals of earth. To expand and wallow. I cherished his size, the formlessness of it, the sheer vulgar pleasure, his sense of being overwritten prose. Somehow it was the opposite of death.

Men would no longer be victims of nature or of their own largely irrational societies: reason would triumph; universal harmonious cooperation, true history, would at last begin. For if this was not so, do the ideas of progress, of history, have any meaning? Is there not a movement, however tortuous, from ignorance to knowledge, from mythical thought and childish fantasies to perception of reality face to face, to knowledge of true goals, true values as well as truths of fact? Can history be a mere purposeless succession of events, caused by a mixture of material factors and the play of random selection, a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing? This was unthinkable. The day would dawn when men and women would take their lives in their own hands and not be self-seeking beings or the playthings of blind forces that they did not understand. It was, at the very least, not impossible to conceive that such an earthly paradise could be; and if conceivable we could, at any rate, try to march towards it. That has been at the centre of ethical thought from the Greeks to the Christian visionaries of the Middle Ages, from the Renaissance to progressive thought in the last century; and indeed, is believed by many to this day.

A visionary looks at the immensity of the world without fear. He looks at the billions of dreams in the millions of people's minds, the hundreds of thousand unfulfilled aspirations, the thousands steps never taken, the hundreds of goals waiting to happen, and understands that in order to change it all, he needs to change the most important part: himself.

Having a grand, bold goal was useless if you didn’t have the ability to tell a compelling story about how you’d get there. That seemed obvious.

Generational curses are actually blessings in disguise; the mistakes were already made for you, now all you have to do is apply the solutions.

Feeling uncomfortable about a situation is oftentimes the indicator that growth is about to take place.

Be the one who sets the trend, not the one who follows it.

Maintaining a state of joyful expectancy and positive anticipation about our desires significantly influences their manifestation into reality.

You do not know what you cannot see when you cannot see it.

Intention directs perception

Be visionary about your goals.

Vision is imagination fueled by an indomitable force of determination, dedication and courage.

Speak victory. Declare that you are well able. Get in the habit of rewarding yourself – for small milestones. Cheer yourself on!

Truly being able to see the needs of others around you, that is a rare gift. Only when you embrace it will you start to learn who you are, and begin going after what you really want.

People often ask me: What are your goals and hopes and dreams for Benj? And the answer is so simple: That he be seen whole against the sky. That he not suffer beyond his and my capacity to bear it. That he be allowed to enjoy the pleasures of "his own private nook" and come out of that nook for joyful engagement with others. That he always hold on to his visionary gleam, his bright radiance.

Of course my dreams lay leagues outside the reach of my resources and the grasp of my abilities. For if I did not dream something wildly bigger than myself, I might have some really good ideas but I don’t have any dreams.

The first thing that a person of vision must recognize is that a vision cast solely from the limited confines of their own tiny existence is not a vision. And if we cannot grasp this essential reality, we will be busy casting a lot of things, but none of them will be a vision.

Full voting rights for American citizens, funding and additional resources for quality schools, and policing and court systems in which racial bias is not sanctioned by law—all these are well within our grasp. Visionaries, activists, judges, and politicians before us saw what America could be and fought hard for that kind of nation. This is the moment now when all of us—black, white, Latino, Native American, Asian American—must step out of the shadow of white rage, deny its power, understand its unseemly goals, and refuse to be seduced by its buzzwords, dog whistles, and sophistry. This is when we choose a different future.

There are two ways a linchpin can use 'no.' The first is to never use it. There's a certain sort of indispensable team member who always finds a yes. She always manages to find a way to make things happen, and she does it. It's done. Yes. Those people are priceless. Amazingly, there's a second kind of linchpin. This persona says 'no' all the time. She says no because she has goals, because she's a practical visionary, because she understands priorities. She says no because she has the strength to disappoint you now in order to delight you later. When used with good intent, this negative linchpin is also priceless. She is so focused on her art that she knows that a no now is a worthy investment for the magic that will be delivered later.

To get a better grasp of the problem, we have to ask: is the leader introducing the changes relying on his own resources, or does he depend on other people’s support; that is, does he have to beg help to achieve his goals, or can he impose them? If he’s begging help, he’s bound to fail and will get nowhere. But if he’s got his own resources and can impose his plans, then it’s unlikely he’ll be running serious risks. This is why the visionary who has armed force on his side has always won through, while unarmed even your visionary is always a loser. Because on top of everything else, we must remember that the general public’s mood will swing. It’s easy to convince people of something, but hard to keep them convinced. So when they stop believing in you, you must be in a position to force them to believe.

Shapers are people who can go from visualization to actualization. I wrote a lot about the people I call “shapers” in the first part of this book. I use the word to mean someone who comes up with unique and valuable visions and builds them out beautifully, typically over the doubts of others. Shapers get both the big picture and the details right. To me, it seems that Shaper = Visionary + Practical Thinker + Determined. I’ve found that shapers tend to share attributes such as intense curiosity and a compulsive need to make sense of things, independent thinking that verges on rebelliousness, a need to dream big and unconventionally, a practicality and determination to push through all obstacles to achieve their goals, and a knowledge of their own and others’ weaknesses and strengths so they can orchestrate teams to achieve them. Perhaps even more importantly, they can hold conflicting thoughts simultaneously and look at them from different angles. They typically love to knock things around with other really smart people and can easily navigate back and forth between the big picture and the granular details, counting both as equally important. People wired with enough of these ways of thinking that they can operate in the world as shapers are very rare. But they could never succeed without working with others who are more naturally suited for other things and whose ways of thinking and acting are also essential.

That pain of wanting, the burning desire to possess what you lack, is one of the greatest allies you have. It is a force you can harness to create whatever you want in your life. When you took an honest look at your life back in the previous chapter and rated yourself as being either on the up curve or the down curve in seven different areas, you were painting a picture of where you are now. This diagram shows that as point A. Where you could be tomorrow, your vision of what’s possible for you in your life, is point B. And to the extent that there is a “wanting” gap between points A and B, there is a natural tension between those two poles. It’s like holding a magnet near a piece of iron: you can feel the pull of that magnet tugging at the iron. Wanting is exactly like that; it’s magnetic. You can palpably feel your dreams (B) tugging at your present circumstances (A). Tension is uncomfortable. That’s why it sometimes makes people uncomfortable to hear about how things could be. One of the reasons Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech made such a huge impact on the world and carved such a vivid place in our cultural memory is that it made the world of August 1963 very uncomfortable. John Lennon painted his vision of a more harmonious world in the song Imagine. Within the decade, he was shot to death. Gandhi, Jesus, Socrates … our world can be harsh on people who talk about an improved reality. Visions and visionaries make people uncomfortable. These are especially dramatic examples, of course, but the same principle applies to the personal dreams and goals of people we’ve never heard of. The same principle applies to everyone, including you and me. Let’s say you have a brother, or sister, or old friend with whom you had a falling out years ago. You wish you had a better relationship, that you talked more often, that you shared more personal experiences and conversations together. Between where you are today and where you can imagine being, there is a gap. Can you feel it?

The various ways of creating a culture of innovation that we’ve talked about so far are greatly influenced by the leaders at the top. Leaders can’t dictate culture, but they can nurture it. They can generate the right conditions for creativity and innovation. Metaphorically, they can provide the heat and light and moisture and nutrients for a creative culture to blossom and grow. They can focus the best efforts of talented individuals to build innovative, successful groups. In our work at IDEO, we have been lucky enough to meet frequently with CEOs and visionary leaders from both the private and public sectors. Each has his or her own unique style, of course, but the best all have an ability to identify and activate the capabilities of people on their teams. This trait goes far beyond mere charisma or even intelligence. Certain leaders have a knack for nurturing people around them in a way that enables them to be at their best. One way to describe those leaders is to say they are “multipliers,” a term we picked up from talking to author and executive advisor Liz Wiseman. Drawing on a background in organizational behavior and years of experience as a global human resources executive at Oracle Corporation, Liz interviewed more than 150 leaders on four continents to research her book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. Liz observes that all leaders lie somewhere on a continuum between diminishers, who exercise tight control in a way that underutilizes their team’s creative talents, and multipliers, who set challenging goals and then help employees achieve the kind of extraordinary results that they themselves may not have known they were capable of.

EXERCISE 10: DEVELOPING A GRAND VISION You may want to do this exercise alone, out in a natural setting somewhere. 1. See Your Interests, Values, and Abilities. The next step is to discover how your interests and your deep values connect into and form your mission. It can be accomplished by seeing a grand, whole, meaningful image of what purpose you could dedicate your life to. This will be formed from your interests, values, and present goals. Begin to play with the images that you see, which represent some kind of direction that you want to take. As you get a sense of what your mission can be, see various snapshots of yourself doing what you love to do, snapshots of your abilities. 2. Focus on Heroes and Heroines. Take a look at what your favorite heroes or heroines do. See yourself doing things that give you the same feeling you get when you think of them. See snapshots of the person you want to become. Any images you don’t like can fade away. 3. Direct a Movie of Yourself. See yourself the way you want to be—doing the things you love to do. Whatever you choose to put on the screen, you’re the Spielberg, you’re the director. See the images that you feel passionate about. You can play with the images in front of you. Pretend that you’re in the middle of an inner, three-dimensional movie theater. It’s a place where you can see and hear and feel with great fidelity. Notice how much you can see, letting the wisdom from within guide the visual display that you see in front of you. Visualize it, feel it, enjoy it. The images are often up close and in full, rich color. See yourself living out a scenario that gives you tingles in your spine. You can zoom in on that glorious, fun-filled, exciting future that you see. It allows you to do what you love to do and accomplish what you believe in. 4. Recall Your Deep Values. List your deep values as you watch your mission scenario. Notice how your values and your images can fit together with a remarkable consistency. 5. Ask for Help from Your Inner Wisdom. Ask for your inner wisdom, the higher powers, or God to guide your grand vision. This vision is going to be more of a discovery than a creation. Let it come to you. Ask and it will come. Take the time to see and hear those aspects of life that unify into a whole that you feel a powerful passion for. See some more images. See some time going by. See various bright, radiant, up-close, colorful images of what it is that you could create in your life. They can begin going in a certain direction, coalescing and representing many of your current goals, some of the things that you want. See them develop into a kind of grand visionary collection of images that represents your purpose and your mission. 6. Do What It Takes. Take whatever time you need—five minutes, an hour, a whole afternoon. This is your life, your future that you are creating. When you finish, write it down. Your images are so attractive, you have some glimpses of what your mission is. Now you can develop it more fully. Ask the visionary in you to give you the gift of this grand vision. Now that you can see your grand vision of what you want to contribute to, you can make that vision into a cause to work for—a specific direction to channel your efforts to.

Our research indicates that of the six leadership styles, the authoritative one is most effective, driving up every aspect of climate. Take clarity. The authoritative leader is a visionary; he motivates people by making clear to them how their work fits into a larger vision for the organization. People who work for such leaders understand that what they do matters and why. Authoritative leadership also maximizes commitment to the organization’s goals and strategy.

Sometimes,” Catmull says, “if it were a big enough of a gut punch he’d go for a walk with the director. Steve was this incredibly intelligent, strong-willed person who made things happen, but at the same time he enabled people. He was always big on going for walks with people. So he would take the director out on a walk, where you talked more slowly, you think through things … just talking, just a friendly back-and-forth talking. His goal was just to help them make a better movie. It always made it easier for the director to move forward. It wasn’t ever like ‘Oh, you screwed up.’ It was ‘What are we gonna do to move forward?’ The past can be a lesson, but the past is gone. He believed that.” This kind of one-on-one mentoring was something Steve learned over time. “Early on, if somebody didn’t measure up Steve wouldn’t hide it,” says Catmull. “That kind of behavior wasn’t something I ever saw during his last ten years. Instead, he would take you off in private, and turn what could have been an embarrassing thing into something that actually became very productive and bonding. He learned; he had taken the mistakes that he made, internalized and processed them, and made some changes.

The real goal is 80 percent or better. If you’re above that level, you have a well-oiled machine with the traction you require. The highest score ever achieved is 88 percent, by The Benefits Company, a 10-person organization that is one of the best small companies I’ve ever seen. Rob Tamblyn, the owner and a pure visionary, had a vision to create the best service company in the benefits business. Since beginning The EOS Process, The Benefits Company has experienced 30 percent growth on average every year for the last five years. To say that it’s gaining traction would be an understatement.

Entrepreneurs are innovators, visionaries—generators of new ideas turning into coinage

Every business plan begins with a side of assumptions… Because the assumptions haven’t been proved to be true (they are assumptions, after all) and in fact are often erroneous, the goal of a startup’s early efforts should be to test them as quickly as possible

Zero Waste is a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use. Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources and not burn or bury them.

THAT PHONE CALL to Clow was the beginning of Steve’s first big move as iCEO. Steve decided Apple needed an advertising campaign to reaffirm Apple’s old core values: creativity and the power of the individual. It needed to be something radically unlike the meek and confused product advertising that Apple had been offering consumers for years. Instead, this campaign would celebrate the company—not the company as it was that summer of 1997, but the company Steve imagined Apple should be. On the surface, it seemed an outrageous and perhaps spendthrift goal, given the company’s losses and layoffs. But Steve was insistent. And that’s why Clow made the journey north from TBWA\Chiat\Day’s offices in the Venice section of Los Angeles to Apple headquarters in Cupertino.

There are two ways the linchpin can use “no.” The first is to never use it. There’s a certain sort of indispensable team member who always finds a yes. She always manages to find a way to make things happen, and she does it. It’s done. Yes. Those people are priceless. Amazingly, there’s a second kind of linchpin. This person says “no” all the time. She says no because she has goals, because she’s a practical visionary, because she understands priorities. She says no because she has the strength to disappoint you now in order to delight you later.

In dreaming about what he would like to become or achieve, his goals are invariably highly individualistic. He must become the composer, the solo performer, the genius scientist who makes the unique discovery. If he is to be noticed at all, then he must be centre stage. If he can’t be centre stage in an area of interest, then he must withdraw and resort to vitriolic criticism. … General role models for INTPs are individualistic, creative and perhaps enigmatic people. Innovative free-thinkers who follow their own new paths are usually greatly respected. Famous historical figures who attract the INTP’s greatest respect are scientists, composers, inventors and, in society, revolutionary leaders and noble visionaries who bring about major change. Above all, individualism is the key factor, while vision is the most highly prized asset.

Instead of directing a business according to a detailed . . . strategic plan, Welch believed in setting only a few clear, overarching goals. Then, on an ad hoc basis, his people were free to seize any opportunities they saw to further those goals. . . . [Planful opportunism] crystallized in his mind . . . after he read Johannes von Moltke, a nineteenth century Prussian general influenced by the renowned military theorist Karl von Clausewitz [who] argued that detailed plans usually fail, because circumstances inevitably change.

Successful people who wish to maintain their successes must make the decision to do so.

Envisioning without action, is the equivalent of praying without faith.

To focus on your legacy when you’re alive, is to detract from the time you could spend building it.

To act out of desperation is to act out of instinct. To let oneself get to that point however, is to ignore self-preservation.

To feel obligated to finish all of your food is to be living with a mindset of scarcity. It is the little things from our childhood that have the longest impact.

At the start of every conversation ask yourself what can I give, not what can I take.

If you are confident in your ethics and morals, you shouldn’t concern yourself with the thought of how you will be with money.

Humans have different emotional states that are here to serve us, if anything be redirected. Not to be tamed.

Your “why” should be centered around yourself. If you’re not taken care of, how do you ever expect to take care of others?

The best bet is in yourself, the second best is in a cup of coffee.

Personal development is a lifelong commitment to excellence.

High pressure salesmen focus on the short term incentives to outweigh the long term cons

Your personal brand when consciously built can be a force for good, or a force for destruction.

True fame is not determined by the amount of people who heard of you, rather by the amount of people who support you.

Influence without control is a weapon of mass destruction.

To give support should be commonplace in our society, not to be asked for.

Movies take years to bring to theater, but hours to watch. Strikingly similar to success.

It is possible for a person to change, this change however must occur willingly, and should never be forced.

The questions that keep us up at night are the questions which drive us during the day.

A mindset of abundance can only be guided and influenced, never forced.

Withstanding hardships is a sort of sport. You can’t control how life plays, but you can control your defensive strategy.

Music allows me to disconnect from my present reality, and communicate to my future wisdom.

The very answers in which we seek are staring back at us in every reflection.

To settle is to die. To not settle implies that death is avoidable.

It is normal to feel alone at the start of any journey. It’s the people who you meet along your travels that make the trip more interesting.

To compete with your reflection, is to have already won long term.

Business is therapy for the dreamers.

Public speaking is only bad if your clothes don’t fit correctly.

My purpose on this planet is to live up to my potential, everything else just adds to the experience.

Even the master plan has room for improvement.

To dwell on the lack thereof is a mental trap the majority of visionaries are taught to do.

Minor inconveniences are just that, and nothing more.

There is as much to be learned from a man with little, as there is from a man with much.

Building your personal brand is one of the few ways you can ensure that you don't stay broke.

It comforts me to know that anything I put my mind to, and pursue, I can achieve.

People get too big to do the little things and then wonder why they don't have the big results.

You either make business your lifestyle, or business becomes your lifestyle.

Chase the vision regardless of what other people do, say, or think.

Competition only exists in your head, not in the marketplace.

At the center of all achievement is personal growth.

It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes—make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words ‘Not to be published’ drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed. ‘What fun it would be,’ he thought, ‘if one didn’t have to think about happiness!

Multiple streams of income do not apply when it comes to vision. You just have to be focused and attain your visionary goal, without distraction

But as the correspondence progresses, it becomes obvious that now, unlike earlier with his mother, he can perceive and articulate his needs more and more clearly, that although he is in constant danger of subordinating his need to be a writer and to be alone to bourgeois ideals of familial happiness, he never succumbs to this danger. In the end, he knows he can never give up his writing without giving up himself, and he accepts the consequences. Since it is not possible for him to go on writing in the world from which he comes without suffering from guilt feelings, he pays for his decision by becoming ill. 5. Kafka's insight into the origins of his tuberculosis can help us in our attempts to understand psychosomatic illnesses and their societal context. Don't we as therapists make it difficult for patients to live their own lives if we have preconceived ideas about what constitutes happiness, psychic health, social commitment, altruism and goodness in a person? According to these conventional standards, still very prevalent today, Franz Kafka was a neurotic or an eccentric, whom a psychotherapist would be tempted to "socialize" in order to enable him to marry Felice. One of my goals in this chapter is to make clear how absurd such an attempt would be. A visionary of rare greatness and dept came into being, and it is obvious that his attempts to adhere to bourgeois norms were bound to fail. Whether humankind cares to pay heed or not, the prophetic power of "In the Penal Colony" endures (...) because he took his own experiences seriously and thought them through to their bitter end. Advocates of manipulative strategies in psychotherapy could counter my views by saying that not everyone has the talent of a Franz Kafka and that most people seek help because they would like to get along better with others, because they suffer from their symptoms, want to improve their relationships, cannot being themselves to marry, and the like. I would reply that these were precisely the complains Kafka had. It would be disastrous, however, not to perceive the longing to find one's true self inherent in these complains.

I would tell you to never give up. You may need to tighten your plan, adjust your pace, redistribute your resources, tweak your trajectory, or backup just enough to regain the objectivity that you may have lost. You may need to eliminate the naysayers, rub shoulders with the visionaries, leave the cowards to the smallness of their existence, hike with those who traverse horizons, and ride hard with those who refuse to live in the rear mirrors of life. Therefore, if I were to tell you to give up, I would tell you to give up everything that are not these things.

The highest-paid individuals are the visionaries, strategists, and creative problem solvers of the world. Your vision is greater than yourself. It gives you a soft direction to focus the goals and actions that stem from it. Your vision should be big, not limited by belief, and emotionally compelling when you marinate your mind in the growing detail.

The mark of a short-sighted goal is that it is solely designed to achieve whatever needs to be achieved as a means of achieving the goal after that. Therefore, its destination is the next step, not the next horizon.

Mysticism can be defined as the quest to experience the presence of God directly. It is the desire to ‘see’ the invisible God and its goal is to become One with the infinite God. In this pursuit, both seeing and hearing are integrally entwined in experiencing God within the heart or imagination of the visionary.

The other nations spent only stingily on their science programs, and in some cases neglected them entirely, as the derision hurled at Goddard's seminal first rocket experiment shows. They also set very limited goals, while the Third Reich, on the other hand, directed large resources to research and encouraged extreme, visionary, and highly experimental projects.