Vision – making your dream a reality

I was at a friend’s 50th birthday party last night and ran into other friends. For many years, we were part of a faith-based organisation, met once a month and spent one weekend together every year. Our children were all different ages.

One of my friends shared her vision about getting the children to become friends with the older ones mentoring the younger ones. We created a buddy system, encouraging them to build and leverage these relationships.

This vision turned ‘social experiment’ was about 10 to 15 years ago. Fast forward 15 years, these ‘children’ are now in or have finished from top universities with excellent career prospects.

As we all know children sometimes listen to their peers more than they do parents. To the delight of the parents these children have helped each other aspire for better results and make some right education and career choices.

The relationship these young people have built over many years has evolved to one of spurring, challenging, coaching, mentoring and encouraging each other.

Our social experiment has produced excellent results and got me thinking of the lessons I’ve learnt from watching them fulfil our vision.

Here are my thoughts:

Have a vision and share it with those who need to be involved

A few of the parents shared their vision on how our children could help each other through a mentoring and support programme. They told a compelling story and other parents bought into it.

What is your vision and who do you need to engage?

Create an enabling environment

As parents who all lived miles apart, we knew the only way our children could develop the relationship was for us to make room for them. Every month, we released them to be with each other and many times, we waited for them even when we were in a hurry. We needed to turn our verbal support into action to help make it happen.

How are you creating an enabling environment for your vision to become a reality?

Invest in the vision

We followed up on what the children discussed on the journey back home. We asked questions and we responded to theirs.

As parents, we shared our own challenges and got support from each other. We role-modelled what we wanted our children to do. We shared our experiences so each of us had a story to tell our children.

What price are you willing to pay to move your vision forward?

Recognise, reward and celebrate successes

We all shared successes with each other and our children in a way that spurred everyone on. We encouraged and recognised each child’s achievements. Every child was celebrated by all parents not just theirs. We gave monetary rewards for excellent performance.

How do you currently celebrate your journey and stay motivated?

Be passionate and have faith for the outcome

We were passionate about the vision and about each other. We became great friends who were and are still there for each other. Our families became extended families for the children. As pseudo family, we asked the questions their parents couldn’t ask and got answers for them.

Demonstrating passion for the vision and each other was an inspiration to the younger ones as they saw us do life’s ups and downs together.     

Is your passion for your vision evident?

As we start a new week, take a moment to think about your vision for yourself, career, business or perhaps for your children. Think about what you need to do to make that vision a reality.  A small group of families have proved that this works and I hope you give it a shot.

Create your own experiment and go make it happen.

Thank you for reading my post. Please don’t keep it to yourself. I’m sure you know many others who can benefit from this blog.

I would love to hear about your own experiments, so drop me a line. See you next week.