The Three Types of Visions

TRANSCRIPT:

Positive focus and a positive vision. I don’t wanna take away anything from the negative folks because I want you to know that negative people are some of the great visionaries of all time. When I use this word vision it’s just a fancy word for a clear mental picture of the outcome.

Anyone here enjoy building one of those 1,000 or 2,000 piece jigzaw puzzles? Okay, quite a few. I hate those. And I hate them because I always buy them, work about 2.5 hours, glance over at my six pieces–actually five, one of them’s a forced fit—I glance back at the box top and glance back at the work, and the only thought going through my bottom-line, results oriented mind is this: why would you bother to duplicate the effort when you’ve got the end result staring at you? I came up with this because my daughter came home from the elementary school carnival with a gallon size zip lock baggy of puzzle pieces. I said to her, Brittany, “Go back to the car, get the box top I’ll help you get started.” She said, “Dad, that’s why I wanted this, because no one, not even people at the school, knew what this is.” You want a challenge? Get buy of those round puzzles that are colorless. We worked 17 hours to put together a white puzzle with a black dot that happened to be the nose of a baby seal. I don’t ever intend to have the experience twice in the my life.

But I also learned this: there are three types of visions.

Vision number one is this: Tomorrow is going to be even better than it was today. And I deeply believe that. If you don’t, remember a line someone told me. They said, “If you’re not really excited about today, remember this, you’re going to be dead for a lot longer than you are alive.” I’m telling you that line changed my life. The more I thought about that… that’s just about hundreds of years we’re going to be dead. We’ve got like 78.6… 84.2… something like that. I want a positive vision.

Vision number two is this: I actually interviewed a couple who said this: I only have a couple years to go before I retire and I just want to hang on. I got this new boss and I just wanna tell him, “My old boss didn’t bug me. If you just not bug me for two years, it’d all be good.” But I gotta give you the statistics. Anytime there’s a new boss, 50 percent says this: great change. 50 percent says this: bad change. My son called me the other day called me up from school and he said, “I’m going to drop a class.” I asked why and he said, “I got a bad professor and he’s difficult to deal with.” I said, “Do you know why they put those people into college for you?” He said, “No Dad, why?” I said, “Prepping you for bosses.” In life you don’t get to choose your boss. In school, you don’t get to choose your professors. But I also know this: it is what it is. I can learn and I can change.

And here’s my third vision… you work with someone who has this one. They look at you and they say this: “You think today’s bad? Just wait!” They truly believe tomorrow is going to be even worse than it was today. Now here’s the scariest thing I’m gonna tell you. The most negative person in your department is with you for a lifetime. Okay? The most negative person is with you for a lifetime. They’re not going anywhere. And you ask, “Why? They don’t like me, they don’t like the boss, they don’t like public health, why wouldn’t they go?” There are two very good reasons. Number one is this: they have zero options. Because everyone who’s ever worked with them says this: “Uh-uh. I’m not taking them with me when I go.” And number two is this: they have a bad vision. They believe the next department will be worse than this one, so they actually stay, spreading ill will and discontent. It becomes like this… I don’t know about you, but if I was on the Titanic, I’m getting off and I’m getting onto another ship. This life is very, very short at best and I need to have a positive vision.