I’ve never been really big on formal goals, goal-setting, or visualization of a desired end-state. Instead, I focus on eliminating things I don’t like and always making some kind of progress on things I do, even if towards a relatively open future. It’s fun and mysterious.
But I’ve begun to realize something. Even though rarely formalized or deliberate, I’ve always dreamt and imagined myself and my projects in different future states. The more carefully I observe and recall, the more I see those imaginings becoming reality. It’s subtle and sly sometimes, but it happens.
I am largely living a life I once imagined. I frequently have experiences where I’ll stop and realize that what I just did is almost identical to something I dreamed up years before. Only after launching Praxis, for example, did I rediscover a long-forgotten PowerPoint called “Education Revolution” wherein I laid out my plan for a “new model of higher education”. I had envisioned it with no particular goal-setting attached, forgotten it, and only after having launched a realization of the concept did I recall the dream.
In recent years I’ve started getting a bit more deliberate with my visualizations of the future. I don’t know what power, if any, it has to bring it about, but I have discovered the immense power such visualizing has to focus my mood and energy in the present. There’s also the entertainment value of looking back on thought-out and written-out goals years later to see what I ended up creating and how well it tracked.
I think there is some power in what we feed our subconscious mind. I think it aids our awareness and thoughts with our conscious mind in ways we don’t yet fully understand. Instead of simply letting my thoughts run wild, I’m trying to get a little – not a lot, as I want plenty of room for free play – more focused and deliberate with my visualizing. We’ll see how it goes.