A Compelling Future
We all need a compelling future to motivate us to do our best in life. The opportunity for a compelling future has traditionally been the greatest gift offered by these United States to its citizens. It is a belief that with strong motivation and diligent work one's goals could be achieved because we live in a society built on a bedrock of freedom and justice.
Visualization is a big component of achieving one's future. Many articles and studies have been written about the importance of seeing your future self. Indeed, it has often been said that one "should start with the end in mind." Meaning imagine yourself at a later date and contemplate how you got there. Just about this time of year though, New Year's Resolutions begin to fade and often drop by the wayside as we fall back into old comfortable patterns.
For most people investing and securing that compelling future are the same thing, or at least should be. Additive steps in the right direction over time begin to compound. And like most things, over time greater and greater experience leads to greater resources and success. Chance definitely plays as part. As does your starting block. But time is a great equalizer in those regards.
So for the young that compelling future is at first a fight for survival, honing one's skills, and becoming useful. As time passes that utility can be transformed into further growth and creation, from starting businesses to mastering valuable skills and building meaningful relationships. Utility becomes relevance.
Once relevance is achieved in the United States, the stars are the limit. Relevance can lead companies, raise capital, create new industry, unleash productivity, and a host of other meaningful results. Relevance by its very nature has a certain sanctity about it because others trust and believe in the potential of that individual. The flip side of the relevance coin is a higher standard to which that individual must be held.
It is this author's opinion that the most compelling future leads to relevance, regardless of industry or profession or even net worth in the traditional sense of dollar signs. As individuals, we can tell by the fruits of our labor the good accomplished. Steve Jobs considered his relevance most importantly as a toolmaker, not a tech titan or a visionary or a billionaire. But he ended up being all those things too.
