If you have ever asked yourself when, if or more importantly why you should start a certain journey, the answer is simply: Better start sooner than later. Just start now.
Be it a business or simply a community/church service. The longer you wait the more you think about what might go wrong, while time flies by without anything happening. That's certainly the biggest mistake of all. Life is too short and looking back at the past with regret is surely nobody's goal for life. We want our lives to matter. We want to contribute to the lives of those around us. We want to create a positive impact. No regrets. Meaningful and enjoyable at the same time. Those are at least some of my thoughts about the meaning of life.[1]
I want my life to be driven by a vision or a bunch of visions.[2]
In every moment, I want to know why I do what I do, and how it contributes to my visions. I want to join others or others to join me in the pursuit of a shared vision, so we can build a better future. Together.
This article should be about some basics on how to find and define a vision, how to cast it and how to refine plans along the way in order to the vision come true.
At the end, I will close my first blog post with my personal vision. I want to share it here, it is my personal statement about why I start to blog here.
So, where start? How come that one tries to change or improve the world? Where do such thoughts come from?
There is this certain tendency in some people of always wanting to be right or to postulate an absolute truth. Please don't get me wrong. I don't want to make everything relative. But I know for sure, that none of us knows everything and until we did not get our theories and beliefs falsified, corrected or proven, it is arrogant to tell others that they have to adjust, to do, or even to think the way we believe. There is even this tendency where some "scientists" are using their sort of halo to subconsciously convey unproven "facts" of preferred theories or even opinions as hard facts in order to achieve certain action from people.
I don't want to write about anything like politics or religion in this post here. Also, this said, I don't claim that my view of the world is the only valid. I just want to inspire others. I want everyone to find personally this one thing worth living for. For a better future.
Thus, it's a journey. No matter where you are, just start at one corner and see where this will get you. I think we all want to improve. So don't let yourself be held back by others.
Vision
With this preliminary outline let's get started with how to define a vision worth living for, and how to get others onboard or how to deal with critics. After reading a few books[3], articles or book summaries[4], listening to podcasts, I have come to the conclusion, that a vision has to deal with certain questions:
- What is the problem? What is the one thing that bothers me most?
- What is the solution? How does the desired future look like?
- What can and should be done in order to achieve this future/solution?
- In light of the current situation, what should be done? Now!
An answer to these four questions has to deal with a lot of further questions, which will go much more into detail and which go mostly into the direction of "have you thought of ...", "how do you want to achieve ...", "did you even consider the following constraints ...", "what will you do, if ... happens?", and so forth.
Those might all be valid questions. But what I consider most important is the human heart, that with a lot of courage and drive will deal with all those questions at the time they become really relevant. Those questions, sometimes with a certain tone of criticism, often come from the closest and dearest friends.
Yeah, it is certainly important to ponder upon a matter and consider the constraints. Especially in the beginning, there are a lot of what-if questions. And as those questions might cause a certain fear and impede on even starting to act upon the vision, don't focus on providing answers to all the questions. Just start. We will figure it out later along the way because the biggest mistake certainly is to never start and to get too anxious about what might happen. Distraction from what should be does come in many forms. And one type of distraction is how- and what-if-questions. The toughest what-if question is: "What if I fail?". But living in regret is worse than failure. I'd rather die trying instead of living in fear and regret. And if I would die tomorrow, the best thing for me to do today is to let my vision live on. It's like a part of me is living on in my vision, if somebody else is picking it up.
So a lot of thinking upon vision might go beyond oneself. Thinking beyond oneself is something I get excited about. Maybe there are many people that feel the same pain as you, but there are only a few out there that envision a certain, desired solution, and there are even less than take action. So start to act upon that vision. Talk about it. Share it with as many people as possible, because one day you will find others who will not criticize you but join you in your pursuit of the vision.
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. - Steve Jobs
Sloyo
So let me post my example vision of a meaningful life here. I want to reduce the huge amount of time people are wasting with "social media". People are more in contact with each other but are still lonely and unhappy nowadays. Everyone is getting more information they cannot even process. Feeling each day to fall behind in this rat race. The people that genuinely care for each other are getting fewer. People are somehow busy, but still separated, numb, forgotten, and they break down.
At least that's my impression and the problem I see. What is my desired future or solution to this problem? Slowing down. Less but more important and meaningful information, conversation, and true friendship. Time and space for meeting face-to-face where we care for each other. Having a good time together. Not feeling the need to jump at every beep of phones. Not having the #fomo - fear of missing out. Instead just #sloyo - slow down yourself. Enjoy the moment. Live more consciously. Take your time to cook. Eat together with friends and family. Focus on people instead of things. Don't take any moment of life for granted, enjoy the very moment, without the fear of missing something else. You don't have to live anybody else's life.
This may sound all like flower power to you, but this is what I really care about. So what will I do about this? I want to make beautifully designed software, that will help people to slow down and get less on their way to truly connect with each other. Software that helps, so that people can meet more often face-to-face, and start serving others.
Currently, I am working with new friends on an app to make planning anything (for instance like parties) less painful. An app that will help to organize all the tasks like who will make a salad or bring beer. An app that will reduce the number of messages and confusion that group chats on any messenger service are producing. An app where finding the right location and time is also easy to do so that more time can be spent on the important things in life.
Shift
Another vision with respect to slowing down is the one that I share with my best friend, who publishes a print magazine. The magazine is about present situations and topics, as well as discussions and thoughts on timeless questions. The magazine called Shift is constituted by three categories of the mind, heart, and horizon.[5]
And as these three categories might imply, they certainly contain content that emphasizes new ideas to think about, feel and experience on a deeper level. It's not about hitting the headlines. It's focused on making us think carefully and widely not opinionated about certain topics. Opposite opinions get a fair chance to be presented. And at some point, the articles wakes me up on certain topics where I've gotten numb. That's what I like about the Shift magazine. So, if you're from Austria, Germany or Switzerland make sure you look out for the Shift magazine at the kiosk or buy an issue online.
Blog
This is my first blog post. I have waited too long to start to write. I have a few more articles in the draft and hope to post them soon. Getting your ideas out there is something everyone should do. It does take time to write and read, but I think this is more important than any news flash. We should reflect more on what we do, and why we do what we do.
I am sure, I am not the best writer. But how can someone improve if he or she is not starting? And I did not want to wait any longer. Exposing myself to critic gives me the opportunity to get better. So please feel free to provide your feedback (hopefully more in a manner of constructive criticism). In posting here I hope that others will also get inspired and overcome their fear. Coming back to the title of this blog article: When to start?.
The answer to that question is just: NOW.
Without going too much into philosophic details and without any religious imperative. ↩︎
Like a business vision statement, vision means to the desired result. But it is not tied to a business and can be applied to any area. ↩︎
One book that I am really thankful for is Visioneering by Andy Stanley. ↩︎
SHIFT is published in German and distributed in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. For more information, please visit Shift Magazine ↩︎
