Category: English

The world we see depends on the lens we use. If our lens is dirty and unfocused, our world will be cloudy and uncertain. If our lens is clean and focused, our world will be beautiful and bright. It’s all a question of focus…

What can we do to get our lens of life looking right?

Juan Carlos Jimenez offers an interesting analogy in his book, Expand your Opportunities – Paradigms of Personal Motivation, which allows us to clean and focus our lens. He uses this phrase from Marcel Proust to set the stage:

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Jimenez suggests we can “Predict the Future” when we dream about what we most desire and take positive action to achieve it. I confess I was somewhat skeptical when I first read his proposal, though I am now convinced he is right.

One theory of motivation talks about two different external motivators. The first is the “carrot” which is used as a prize or a reward for a job well done. The second is the “stick” which is used to chastise or punish a job done poorly. While both work as external motivators in the short-term, more important is to create long-term internal motivation. To increase internal motivation, Jimenez explains:

“… dreams are the source of your most important motivation because they are completely within your reach. They depend only on you. They are your own carrot, your interior carrot.”

The more specific and vivid our dream, the more our internal “carrot” grows and drives us toward our objectives. While I read this concept, it occurred to me carrots are rich in Vitamin A, which influences positively on our vision, and thus on our “lens of life.”

This clarity encourages us to see obstacles and problems in a different way. While they don’t magically disappear, improved focus helps us to see them with a different perception and perspective. Our internal motivation and experience begins to generate solutions instead of raising barriers. With enhanced vision we can “Predict the Future” with greater certainty. Inconveniences in life become no more than specs of dust temporarily hindering our vision, instead being easily cleaned with precise actions leading us toward our dream.

Predicting the future isn’t really so difficult; we do it all the time. It is a direct result of our actions and, while it isn’t an exact science, we can predict the future with surprising accuracy in many circumstances. If we greet someone with a smile, we have a higher probability they will smile back than if we greet them with a sneer. If we pick up the phone to call a possible client, they are more likely to buy what we offer than if we wait for them to call us.

Life is similar, people who achieve greatness have a lens focusing on solutions rather than problems; they have crystal clear dreams and objectives serving as an internal carrot allowing them to predict the future to great degree. They take actions congruent with obtaining their golden dream and they become the “lucky ones” who give direction to their destiny living the life they most desire.

∞ Rob McBride ∞
LL III 13