While my friend, Faye, was showing my sister Brenna and I around Bartlesville, we stopped at a wonderful place called Martha’s Task. Martha’s Task is a place where homeless women can come and learn how to sew and knit. The women can then come once a week to sew, and be paid, earning money to get diapers for their babies and food.
As we walked around the place, I saw a blackboard with the word VISION written on it. Well, I have been a student of “visioning” for many years now, and though I’m no expert, I have seen it work wonders in my life. So I asked about it. I learned that one of the women who had come to Martha’s Task had rebuilt her life and now runs workshops for the women who are currently there.
Unfortunately, she said the majority of the women who attend the class have no concept of a “vision” for their lives, or of goal setting for that matter, because they are in constant urgency mode. On a daily basis, they are in such deep need they can’t stop to imagine any sort of future, let alone an abundant one, for themselves or their children. Just like their mothers couldn’t stop for the “luxury” of imagining a better life. Poverty, our guide told us, is generational. These women have no blueprint for a better life. Their vision remains the one passed down to them.
Today I realize that before I can envision a beautiful, abundant life, I have to let go of some limiting beliefs, and that is not easy!
When my older brothers were kids, my dad took them to downtown Chicago for a life lesson. My dad had made it out of a pretty tough South Side neighborhood and had succeeded. He took the boys to Madison Avenue, which in those days was the skid row of Chicago. Then he took them to Michigan Avenue and The Gold Coast, and said, “You have a choice.”
So now that it’s a new year, it’s time to once again work on my vision and determine what I want to achieve in the coming year. It’s up to me to not only imagine all of the good things that the Universe can bring me, but to also put my faith in the Universe by taking action steps to making those goals a reality.
One of my favorite visioning teachers is Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, who so wisely says: “We are pushed by pain, or pulled by a vision.”
I realize I have a choice, and today I chose to move forward toward my vision.