Attain a Vision

So Attain a Vision was actually the first blog post I wrote and really knew that it was going somewhere. I mean before this, I wrote some generic fitness advice with the emphasis of developing mindset. But this is where – ironically – I think my vision started coming together for Warcloudfitness.com.

In the previous modules, you learned how to become determined. That is really going to be important if you hope to move forward in Attaining a Vision.

You know, it was all tied to this video of Alan Watts talking about basically, just forget about what’s realistic or what you think you ought to do with your life – forget about the money – and just fantasize about what you would do if you could do whatever you wanted.

And, you know, it’s really funny because I think this video is more relevant today in 2021 than it was when I first watched it in 2013. I mean, I think the past year of 2020 really made people think about how they’re spending their time and ask “where is all this going?” and “am I going to chase a paycheck for the next forty years?”

Obviously, you could also just say that those questions are inherently existential and people have been asking them forever. But notwithstanding that, we are at a point in time where we have more options.

Now, I’m not saying (and I don’t believe Alan Watts was saying this either) that you can live however you want while bucking the system. But if you want to live, as he says, “a short life that’s full of things you love to do than a long life spent in a miserable way.” I would rather substitute the word simple or modest for short, so a simple life that’s full of things you love to do than a long life spent in a miserable way.

Again, I’m just throwing out there that there are options. I think there were always options. It’s just that now, with the internet and…you know, not just the power to sell things or make money online but the information and perspective that comes from being able to interact with millions of other people. We are allotted a very different perspective than our ancestors maybe had the opportunity to gain.

Alan Watts is saying that we do things we don’t like just so we can keep doing things we don’t like and eventually pass that mentality to our children. What he’s describing is a distorted perception of reality.

In reference to the Warpath:

“…We must recruit our minds and bodies, awaken our faculties to Take Up a Cause.”

But this distorted Cause is based in emotion rather than grounded in reality. And that’s what we do. We make decisions based on short term gratification or short term fears. The best way I’ve found to break the cycle is to first: do what Mr Watts talked about, which is come up with what you would like to do if you weren’t bound by those fears – What do you desire? – and then (here comes the hard part) you actually have to do the work.

If you just do the Envisioning, but you don’t do anything to Attain the vision and make it reality, you will become bitter. We see that happen to some people. They’ve spent all the time daydreaming about “wouldn’t it be nice if…” but immediately shut it down by saying, “there’s no money in that, and because of our wicked capitalistic society, we have to do things we don’t like so we can keep on doing things we don’t like and we teach our children to do that” and they want the system to change. But it’s not the system. It’s their own wretched cycle of thinking and not doing.

So, next is Gary Vaynerchuk’s 5-minute Plea to Do.

I wrote the original Attain a Vision in 2018. From that, I quote:

“Within a vision, one beholds their ideal circumstances. Often times, the details of a vision can be difficult to impart to others, because they have not seen it. In fact, they will NOT see it until you do it. Don’t expect them to understand your vision if you have not started doing something about it.”

“So start DOING IT! Envisioning is not enough. You must attain a vision – you must make it a reality.”

“Attaining a vision is not a passive act of thinking about what you desire – it is executing, again and again, to gradually possess the outcome of the vision. Simply seeing a desired outcome in your mind is not enough.”

I mean, the gig is up. Right? It’s time to figure out what you want to do with the time you’ve got left. and honestly, the way that I think about it is: the perfect day.

John Spencer Ellis – a mentor of mine back in the day – he gave that advice to me. He said, imagine your perfect day and plan it out in detail and then build a reverse roadmap of what it’s going to take to get there.

But before we get to that, before we can build the perfect day, I want to impress upon you the significance of one day.