Why do some people seem to be able to set (what others might deem unattainable) goals – yet achieve them with what appears to be relative ease? Why don’t the most talented people always win in life: even when nature has clearly blessed them with a more impressive array of talents and abilities than their counterparts? How do clearly very intelligent people end-up taking orders from self-evidently stupid ones: day-after-day and year-after-year? Why do some capable people collapse into an untidy heap the first time they encounter (what they consider to be) difficult circumstances? All good questions: all deserving of equally good answers.
Confidence plays a key role in determining a person’s life outcomes – but ‘life vision’ (or in more cases than not) plays a far more telling role. Confidence is defined in the dictionary as: The feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something. Mmmn…So confidence is a ‘feeling’ not a fact! It is possible to feel very confident: without good reason – just as it is altogether possible to lack personal confidence for no apparent reason.
To my mind ‘reasons’ are very important and should be examined in more detail. If confidence stems from a belief in ‘something or someone’ – the nature and substance of that something or someone is absolutely critical. You don’t need faith in order to believe in what your eyes can see: faith does its most important work when your eyes can see nothing praiseworthy at all. Stay with me: it’s about to get real up in here!
Aspirational thinkers don’t need external motivation: their beliefs enable them to persist – long after all others have faded into insignificance.
The principle difference between winners and losers is what their attention is focused on during the evidence-gathering process. Anyone can win when winning is easy, but genuine winners see victory everywhere – all of the time: especially when all of the available ‘evidence’ says otherwise. The ability to continue to have faith in something that as yet, remains unproven requires a particular skill: that skill is called ‘vision-led living.’
Vision-led individuals are not governed by situations, but by aspirations. Vision-led people don’t see the obstacles, but merely the big prizes that get handed-out as a result of overcoming all hindrances. Vision-led leaders are more generous, thoughtful, inspiring and effective: meaning that not only do they achieve more themselves, they also facilitate continued heightened performance from others too.
