Developing a Vision You Can Pursue with Passion
by Les Parrott, PhD
What would you do if you suddenly found yourself independently wealthy without need of a job? If you could do anything you wanted with your life, would it be what you’re doing right now? Are you like Dave, a former student of mine, who can’t believe he gets paid for doing what he loves?

If so, you’re in the minority. But if you’re not, I want to show you how you can find passion for what you do with your life. The first step is always a vision. Like my students, many of us let life happen to us, only seeing what’s set before us. But everyone who has ever known the exhilaration of passion started with a vision. They saw beyond their circumstances. Here’s what I mean:

• In 1774, John Adams boldly declared, “Someday I see a union of thirteen states, a new nation, independent from England.” That seemed impossible at the time. Yet just a few years later, against all odds, a new nation was born.
  
• In the late 1800s, the Wright brothers said, “Someday people are going to fly through the air.” Ten years after they made that statement, their plane lifted off the ground in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
  
• In the 1920s, Robert Woodruff, who was president of Coca-Cola for more than three decades, said, “Someday every man in uniform will be able to buy a bottle of Coke for five cents anywhere in the world.” Even though the price has changed, Coca-Cola is now sold in more than two hundred countries.
  
• In the 1940s, Billy Graham and a group of his friends said, “Someday we will fill stadiums all over the world where people can hear the gospel in person and on television.” Today, over a billion people have seen at least one of his crusades.
  
• In 1974, Bill Gates and Paul Allen stood in Harvard Square and said, “Someday every home will have a personal computer — and we can supply it with software.” More than 100 million personal computers are used by people every day.

Each one’s passion was born from a vision, an actual picture of the future. They could see it. They could feel it. And in Robert Woodruff’s case, they could even taste it.

Once you capture a vision for the future—and the role you play in it—passion is born. In fact, as I often tell my students: Vision is a picture of the future that gives passion in the present.

Some people catch their vision when they roll up their proverbial sleeves and get involved. That’s exactly what happened with Kenneth Behring. He’d made money as a successful auto dealer, real-estate developer, and football team owner. By 1999, he was already giving money to a variety of causes, including the Smithsonian Museum and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Then, on one of his international trips, Behring agreed to personally drop off some wheelchairs he had helped fund. That’s where he had his epiphany. “I’ve always given money to charity, but in the past I didn’t give myself with it,” he said in his autobiography. “When you actually get an opportunity to personally help somebody, it changes your life.”

Behring was called upon to present one wheelchair to an elderly widower in Romania who had been immobilized by a stroke. He literally picked the man up out of a pile of rags on the ground and gently placed him in the new chair. As the old man sobbed, Behring’s life took a new turn. “I have never felt so gratified as I did in that moment,” he says. “It took so little to give a wheelchair, but yet it meant so much. I was amazed. I had helped give someone the gift of a new life.”

Behring went home and founded the Wheelchair Foundation, a nonprofit organization with the mission of “leading an international effort to create awareness of the needs and abilities of people with physical disabilities, to promote the joy of giving, create global friendship, and to deliver a wheelchair to every child, teen and adult in the world who needs one, but cannot afford one. For these people, the Wheelchair Foundation delivers hope, mobility, and freedom.”

Behring’s vision for helping people obtain wheelchairs only happened when he got personally involved. Only then did he see what they represented for the poor around the world, giving mobility to the often stigmatized disabled people who previously got around by crawling or dragging themselves. Especially in developing countries, a wheelchair represented new life. A newly mobile person regained status as a human and received a place in their society. Suddenly they could leave their homes and have some measure of independence again.

Even if your heart is stirred or your mind is interested by a vision, it often won’t fully take hold until you take a physical step in that direction. As you begin exploring a vision, find a way to get personally involved in it. Hands-on experience is often the way to fully engage the vision for your life.

When you find a true vision, you have a pulse-quickening experience. You are immediately energized by it. If a heart monitor was strapped to your chest when you talked about your vision, the difference would be noticeable. Pay attention to your reaction after you articulate a possible vision, because an authentic vision cannot help but to ignite passion.

And by the way, I don’t believe you get only one vision for life, and if it doesn’t come in college, you’re out of luck. To the contrary, I think our vision often changes over time. That’s good news if you’re not twenty-one years old as you read this. No matter how old you are, or how long you’ve gone without a vision, it’s never too late to discover a vision that you can pursue with passion.

From 3 Seconds: The Power of Thinking Twice by Les Parrott, PhD