Wrong thinking about vision
"Oh, if only I had a vision."
Many people suffer from the fact that they cannot the have a great vision for their lives.
Just like people who knew from an early age that they wanted to become astronauts, nurses or world saviours.
You think that the vision would make them happy.
Many people overlook two important aspects:
1. Vision alone does not make you happy.
A well-lived life makes you (usually relatively) happy. This includes all eight elements of life, not just one.
In my new coaching book I have written the following about this.
"I just have to find my vision, then I'll be happy," I often hear.
Visions make you happy? Sorry. Not a chance. No single element of life alone has the power to make us happy.
People who pursue a certain vision very strongly can even have something driven, even manic.
For some visionaries, the vision bordered on madness - or became madness when the vision of the "wonderful world" was carried out on the backs of others.
Whether it was the ingenious builder of the pyramids, which were only possible with forced labour, or the architects of social ideologies that claimed millions of victims.
Violin maker Martin Schleske dreams of standing in the workshop until he is 85 and becoming better than Stradivari.
He wants to find a unique, powerful and at the same time gentle sound.
He is realistic enough to know that every vocation also has its annoying and stressful aspects.
And that you can and must follow a vision - but should not expect happiness from it.
This is how he put it on LinkedIn in February 2025:
The horses have only been in my life for a very short time, three years. It's like an atomic explosion of love. I believe that the older you get, the more necessary it is to distinguish between vocation and source. Here in the workshop, I have my vocation, I also have the gift for it, and I realise: vocation can exhaust us, vocation can also exhaust us. We give who we are and what we have. And it lives from our dedication.
I also suffer from the unbelievable demands that musicians place on me in terms of what I should create for them. The workshop often spills over with such a big musician's soul, with all the dissatisfaction, and you almost drown in the expectations of the musicians.
And that is why I realise: I must not make my vocation the source. It must not be what feeds my soul, but rather my life's mission. I am grateful that heaven has given me the horses.
Do you know your calling? And do you have a source that tells you that you don't have to be perfect - and that strengthens you in everything?
2. You probably already have large parts of your vision.
When I ask around, I often realise that most people know what is important to them and what they would like to do. And many are already doing it.
Nevertheless, they think they have to hit a precise point where they can then the Finding a vision.
I wrote in the book:
Nevertheless, for most of us, vocation is a field in which we can move rather than a point that we have to hit.
My talents lie, for example, in coaching and in summarising knowledge and making it practical.
Whether I do this in the form of books, seminars, courses or one-to-one meetings is almost irrelevant.
Within the broad field of coaching, writing and training, I live my vision.
So if you do not the vision, then that's not so bad.
Then just keep living for the many little things that are important to you. That is also vision.
If you want to sort through the existing building blocks and bring order to your thoughts on the vision, I recommend the webinar Life vision - and of course the chapter from the new Coaching book.
The book also shows you how you can coach and support others who are struggling with the topic of vision.
And if you are one of those people who simply have too many good ideas and don't know where to start, then I recommend the webinar 1000 ideas and no plan.
In any case, I hope that the pressure of the "vision" issue will go away - and that you can live with it in a more relaxed way.
