April is an anniversary month for me and FOOTSTEPS. I’m a year older on exactly the last day of the month and it would be about 2 years of blogging. For me, anniversaries are worthy of reflections and celebration. This is majorly because one needs to be glad to be alive to see another one, and for progress since the last one (as there should have been, even if small). So truly, I feel blessed to be adding another year to my age and this blog, to look back between now and the last, and appreciate the growth so far.
In as much as I see the need to reflect at anniversaries, it is also a good time to project to where we want to be, like organizations do at their Year End Strategy Sessions, . Lately, an old learning has been coming to mind which I believe would help with projecting at a time like this. For those of us familiar with Bible stories (I’m an ardent believer), this would be a reminder to a popular one where I would start this post from.
A man had the opportunity of turning fortune around in his favour by agreeing with his father-in-law that he’d take only the streaked of the cattle the father-in-law had after a period of time. Funny enough, at the time of this agreement, the father-in-law from all perspectives was more likely to be better off. However, this man had a strategy. He used the power of pictures on the cattle. He positioned before the cattle in their moments of heat, when they drank, “pictures of streak” from the bark of trees. So that somehow when they reproduced, though they were not streaked, they had streaks. And he made sure he did this with the stronger of the cattle, and at the end of the agreed period, the streaked outnumbered the non-streaked.
Truth is, if we look at our lives now, we are either at or close to some of the pictures of what we saw of ourselves years back in our lives. I know some may say, "well no...", but if you are far from it, then you probably didn’t make that picture strong enough on your subconscious. Somehow we attract what we are, and we gradually become what we see or believe of ourselves over time.
My take on this, is to review what exactly we see and the sources of those pictures. These pictures which we see even with closed eyes could come from what we hear/listen to, what people say to us, what we read or even what we watch. You cannot desire to have red pictures in your mind and all you overwhelm yourself with are yellow pictures. You’ll get to a place where even when you see the red, you call it yellow. So if those sources are giving wrong pictures change or correct them as the case maybe.
Secondly, get those pictures of who you want to be where you want to be or go, or what you want to do always before you. A couple-friend recently shared with us their exercise on cutting out pictures close to what they want their future to be like and pasting it on a board they would see regularly. This idea I encourage greatly, because some of us, for so long have seen the exact opposite of what we want our future to be like and we need a paradigm shift. You could even start with the screen saver on your phone or computer.
Lastly, those figures when settled strongly in our subconcious to a large extent affect the decisions we make, what we attract or what we get attracted to. Infact, at some point we begin to say so much about it that others around us can identify us with them.
In essence, we need to make sure we receive the right pictures and we need to focus on them. The reality is that, if by natural standards we wouldn’t have been able to do much of accomplishing them, we would in a future not too far from now, see ourselves having achieved much. As I look forward to these last days into my next birthday, my major goal is to seek the greatest source of my future pictures for new/clearer pictures of my life. My challenge, as you also consider projecting, is with this question…What Do You See?
