Where there is no vision, the people perish

Hello world

I have a confession to make. This is my first ever blog post. And to be honest, I’ve not really been a heavy blog post consumer myself, so I’m not entirely sure what one is supposed to even look like.

That said, I do know something that’s totally changed the way I look at setting and working towards goals.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”

This originally comes from Proverbs 29:18 KJV. I first heard this phrase while serving as a missionary for my church, but it’s kept with me even after coming home from my mission. In order to illustrate, let me show you why this matters for anyone who’s ever started something and not finished for whatever reason. I’ll first explain how I’ve understood the phrase; second, how it’s helped me; and third, how it can help you.

Cool, but what does it mean??

Have you ever done something (like learn piano) and liked it to start off with, but after hours of practice and what feels like no improvement, wonder why you started to learn in the first place?

Let’s compare and contrast:

Goal: I want to be able to play the piano. Plan: I’ll play every day for 30 minutes. Schedule: I’ll play at 9am when I wake up.

How long do you think it’ll be before you start to skip “just one day”? And then another… And another… Until eventually you realize that it’s been a couple months since you last played the piano and you still haven’t gotten anywhere near your “goal” of being able to “play the piano” whatever that means…

Now let’s bring a vision into the mix.

First, what do I mean by vision? Instead of just saying something you want to do explain the vision. How would you feel? What would you see? Hear? Smell? Make the dream vivid. Make it something so real that you could almost reach out and grab it.

For example. It was an early winter morning. Cloudy and a little gloomy. I sat down at the piano and began to play a soft calm melody. I started to hear my kids stirring in their rooms their day greeted by the warm song I now played. I kept playing, the song growing a little faster, a little brighter. I could almost feel rays of sun on my hands as they glided across the keys. There was no longer me and the keyboard, it felt as if we had melded into one. My emotions seemed to seep out through the keys. The melody sped up, the tune even brighter. I finished my song and looked away from the piano. Only then did I realize that it was still gloomy outside. And yet, it still felt just a little bit brighter.

Whoa. Big difference. Now, imagine that each morning you wake up with that vision in mind. If you can do your best to keep that vision with you as you learn, why would you ever miss a day?? I wouldn’t!

Let’s do another one: I imagine that I’m playing with my nephew and we’re playing tag. He’s 12 at this point, so he’s pretty quick. But I’m quicker. I run around the park, up the stairs, around the chairs. All without breaking a sweat. Sorry (insert name of nephew here) you’re not winning today….

I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty competitive. That would definitely motivate me to exercise 😂

Strive

I think Strive is a great place to put these visions. Then whenever you start working on it, you can go look at what you wrote out.

In conclusion

When you spend a little extra time to understand why instead of just what you want to accomplish, then you’ll go further then you ever thought you could. Or, in short, “Without a vision, the people perish”.

Thanks for reading!

Notes

This blog was 100% written by me. I may use AI to help me make an outline or to critique my writing to help me improve it, but I’ll never use AI to actually write my content.