The Power of Vision

Transcript

Jim 0:01

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Decide on Joy, a podcast coming to you from Harmony Spiritual Center in Fort Worth, Texas. My name is Jim Kovalt. And my name is Reverend Dr. PJ Stanley. Thank you so much for being here today. Today's episode is titled The Power of Vision. I assume we're not just talking about eyesight here. How you can see? We're talking about how you can see, but yeah, not eyesight. Nor, in fact, the sort of vision you might have if, the Virgin Mary appears to you and- true, Yes. It's not a dream. Oh, although, interesting. It's a number of things, but we'll get to that. Yeah. Maybe it would cover that, but that, that sort of vision seems to be a different thing. Yeah. It- it's one of the things I think that what that brings that, what brings it up for me when you mention that, is that people have a vision in different ways. So that vision that, like you speak of, the vision, seeing Mother Mary or whoever you were seeing, could be your, a vision of the future for you because that's how you see it. Visions come in different ways for different people. You have to define what you want your vision to look like. And but we'll talk about that. So we're talking about a sort of vision that you would... Not dependent on outside sources- No, it's not that you create yourself. Exactly. It's a vision that you have for what you want your future to look like, what you want your life to look like. This is, it's a decision that you make. Yeah. That's what we're talking about when we talk about vision. And I think one of the obviously one of the famous quotes in the Bible is"Without a vision, the people perish." And that simply means that if you don't have a vision of where you wanna go you're going to be just subject to circumstance rather than making a definitive d- decision about- where you wanna go. It's like taking a trip. You say you wanna take a trip. You don't just get on the airplane. You say where you want that trip to be. I wanna go to Paris. I wanna go to Italy. You see yourself there, and so then you make all the appropriate arrangements for that. A vision for your life is the same way. The thing is with the power of it, so that would be a question, why is it powerful? Yeah, yeah. Why is it? Why is it powerful? The thing that we're talking about here w- that matters to me, that I talk about a lot, is being purposeful about your life. Because i- if you don't make a decision about where you wanna go, who you wanna be, how you wanna live, then you're subject to a lot of circumstance, and you're subject to other people's opinions, which we know everyone has several of them. And certainly have opinions about where your life should be going. So you're subject to that if you don't know for yourself what you want your life to look like, and that's based on what matters to you, whether it's family or whether it's, getting a job, whatever is important to you. So creating a vision in your own mind of what you want your life to look like allows you to head in the direction of your choice, as opposed to being, moved around by circumstance, where everybody else is going, what other people say is important. May not be important to you. It might not. So it's powerful to have a vision so that you can... we don't know how much time we have on this planet, and I'm unaware. I'm consciously unaware of whether or not I was here before and whether I'll be here again. So all I know is about this particular life that I have. And so I'd like to make it the best that I possibly can. So that means that we think about it and we decide, this is the title of the thing, decide on joy, decide what your life, you want it to look like. And so that's why it's very powerful and important that you determine what it is you want your life to end up looking like, where you wanna be, who you wanna be with, those kinds of things. So it's important. And how does that prevent you being swayed by other circumstances or other people's ideas of what you should be? Because you can... It's It's if you say you wanna go to, to the Ridgemar Mall as opposed to going out to Wrigley Square. If you don't say which one you're gonna go to, where you wanna be, you'll end up some place else where someone else wanted to go. So someone wanted to come to the Ridgemar Mall, and you're just following along because you don't have a plan or a thought about where you wanna be. Your vision's the same way. If someone can say,"Hey, this is important right here. Going to this particular place, they've got great stuff, they're doing wonderful things," and they'll guide you to going down this particular path. And you just say,"All right, let's go." And then you get there, and it's not necessarily where you wanted to be because you didn't actually think about what was important to you what are they saying, is that aligned with what you believe? Is that aligned with what is important to you? Where you, what you wanna do in the world? Because I think we all have a purpose. We all have a gift. Several gifts, actually. So if you don't recognize what those are and claim them, that's what a vision is, it's claiming your life, you'll just end up in somebody else's life, and eventually unhappy, generally speaking. You'll be unhappy. So how do you maintain this vision? Yeah. It seems like it's not easy, but it's okay. You've made the step. You've said, this is what I want.""This is what I'm aiming for." Yeah. It seems like it's perhaps easy to lose track of that. Go astray, yeah. Exactly. It is. So here... What I like to remind people of is that- You, your vision comes from your dream life. You actually can sit down and say,"What do I want my life to look like?" And just think about it in a dream. In fact, one of the tools that I use is to ask people,"What do you want your life to look like three years from now?" Not next year, three years from now. And the reason that we do that is because you can't... It- it's hard for your mind to argue with what's gonna happen three years from now. It's easy to argue with what's gonna happen a year from now, and I believe, I don't know, but I believe that's because we all make New Year's resolutions. And in January, we're all ready to go and work out, and we're gonna da-da-da. And come February, March, April if you're lucky, those- they're- they've gone by the wayside. You're generally... Most people, not everyone. Some people do stick to it. But mostly they've gone by the wayside. So what I recommend is that you think about your life and what you want it to look like in four, what I call, domains of life, which is health and wel- health and well-being. Because no matter what you dream about, if you're not healthy, if you can't get around, if you don't feel well, none of it, the rest of it's going to matter. So that's the first one. What does your health look like? What do you want that to be, to look like? What do you want your love and relationships, that's the second domain. Who do you wanna be with you? What kind of relationships do you want? And in particular, it starts with the relationship you have with yourself. What do you want you to look like, and then the people that you attract to you. Then the third one is what your vocation or avocation is. What do you want... what's your life's work? What do you love to do? So that's, you want to have a vision for that. And then you wanna have a vision for time and money freedom. So if you had all those things, if you had the the relationships you wanted and the health and all of that, do you have the time and the money to do those things?'Cause sometimes we'll take a job that's taking 80 hours of our, of a week of our time, so then we don't actually have any freedom to do what we wanna do with our life because we spent so much in the vocation area. So th- that's a basic idea. And you simply sit down and you think about what do you want it to look like three years from now, and you write it out. You don't just think about it, you write it out. And you look at it and you read it every day. Every day. And you adjust it as more things come to you. You adjust it. You add to this, or you think,"Oh, I thought that was important, but it really isn't, so let me scratch that off." And so you continue until you pretty much have a roadmap for what you want your life to look like. You- Yes back there, if I'm remembering correctly, you used the term it comes from your dream life. Do you... Are we talking about the dreams you have while you're sleeping? No, we're talking about the the dreams we had when we were kids. We would see ourselves,"I'm gonna be a ballerina," and so you saw yourself on stage."I'm gonna be an actor," and you would see yourself there. So that, those kinds of things. They're awake dreams Where you sit down and you see yourself in the future living that life that you wanna live. And imp- that's important to see it, but it's also important to do, to add the senses to it. So you're not just seeing it like it's on a film on the s- on the screen. You're seeing it that way, but you also smell it, feel it, touch it. You have, you sensorize it so it becomes very alive for you. Here's the reason why. Most people think that you're trying to get to a dream. One of these days I'm gonna be a singer. I'm gonna be a ballet- One of these days I'm gonna get to my dream. But that's actually not how it works. Energetically, you come from the energy of your dream. So you wanna ha- be very excited about it, and have your mind, and your senses, and your body very excited about where you're what you're dreaming about. And so you make it very alive for you. And that's how you do it. You write it out, you read it every day, and you see it, smell it, taste it. You taste the coffee that you're drinking. If you're sitting around someplace in a restaurant having coffee, you taste it. So those are, that's what you do. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. Once you write it out and you write, and you read it every day, you bring that energy to you every single day until it becomes you. It becomes your reality, and it actually starts to become your reality because you're drawing it to you. You're a- you're attracting it. You become it. And so is that the action that you need to take to to write it down and read it constantly and all that? Is- Yes. Y- What was the question? So what was the reason- Is that, is there anything else you need to do about it? There really isn't. That really is it because what happens is you're attracting ideas. Ideas is the first currency, by the way, of the universe, is an idea. When you say you want something, an idea will pop into your head, and then you wanna follow that idea.