What’s the vision for your life? How could you make it bigger?
Those questions may irk you. Perhaps because you don’t know how to answer them. Or perhaps because you think a big vision means self-promotion or world domination.
Having a big vision requires neither shameless self-promotion nor a world stage. Instead, it’s that seemingly impossible aspiration that propels you to be a better leader, a better parent, a better friend.
Regardless of whether you have a big vision, you need one to:
- Remind you to live for others. Big visions are not about accumulation. As John Ruskin once wrote, “When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.” What makes a vision big is its impact on people; whether in your living room or across the world.
- Remind you to enlist others. “No man is an island; Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent; A part of the main,” so wrote the poet John Donne. When your vision is big, you attract others to join in, making you more dependent upon them.
- Remind you to learn from failure. Your successes teach you nothing, except to take pride in them. When you stretch yourself toward a big vision, failure occurs. And so does learning.
- Remind you to trust God. It’s probably safe to say if you can do it, you won’t trust God for it. When your vision is big enough that you scratch your head, doubt yourself, and get discouraged from time to time, you’re finally in the right place. He’s the one that is “able to do beyond all you can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).
Face it, a you-sized vision is not very exciting. We’ve all grown weary of others who are all about them. Don’t be that person.
Instead, get stretched. Ask God to enlarge the vision for your life—big enough to make you fully dependent on Him for the outcome. Then cultivate it with a step each day toward it.
What are other reasons for stretching your vision?
