I’ve said, on my Facebook page: …Because there is greatness in you, and you know it. What does that mean?
Let’s vamp a little on the old saying, Inside every fat person is a thin person waiting to come out. This may be true, or not; many fat people are absolutely happy where they are. And that goes for everyone else I’m about to bring up. But bear with me awhile; there’s a useful germ here.
Inside every poor person is a carefree millionaire. Inside every clumsy person is the wishful concept of grace or competence. Inside every inarticulate person is a public speaker. Inside every wuss is a jock. Inside every musical moron is a meadowlark.
Behind every failure is an insufficiently conceived success. It is this process of conception we’re concerned with right now. It’s these mysterious steps between fat and thin, sick and well, timid and courageous, poor and wealthy. How do you get from here to there when you’ve never been ‘there’? And when you perhaps even fear ‘there’? How can you envision yourself as healthy when you can’t walk to the mailbox? How can you envision yourself wealthy when your only experience with wealth is a movie villain lighting a cigar with a hundred-dollar bill?
Visioning (or envisioning, or visualizing) is a necessary tool if you want to accomplish anything whatsoever. If you will observe yourself today, you’ll see that every smallest conscious action you perform has been preceded by an image of yourself performing it. Reach for your coffee? Believe me, you have already seen the meeting of cup and lip in your mind’s eye.
Most often, we envision acts that are familiar to us, so it’s no stretch. If, however, we envision holding a tarantula, we might hesitate a bit (if we are not seasoned tarantula holders) because the holding of a tarantula is unfamiliar. We don’t know what to expect. Our skin might prickle at the prospect even though we’ve been assured that holding a tarantula is perfectly fine and fun.
Our own potential—the greatness we all suspect we have within us—is a little like that tarantula. It’s unfamiliar; we haven’t actually experienced it, touched it. Who knows, we might hate it. It might feel terrible to walk on the beach in a bikini—to stand on a stage and start talking—to catch a hard-thrown ball—to plunk down a thousand bucks for a blouse—to be seen by one’s friends driving a Cadillac—to swim in deep water—to sing a glass-shattering high C. We can see strangers doing these things, but not ourselves. We wouldn’t even be ourselves, maybe; we’d be like those strangers. Our friends might look askance at us and say, accusingly, “You’re not the same person.”
Will you, in fact, be the same person? Yes and no. A fully developed person is a person whose values are congruent with his/her actual life. If you don’t love where you are, your values are incongruent with your actuality. If you change your life to better suit your values, you will be the same person you always were—a person who has a value system. The only difference is, now you’re a person who has brought that value system to the forefront and is living accordingly. Envision that!