Podcast MDM Academy Conference

EP 169 The dreams you're carrying are the most noble part of you

Years ago, when I was just beginning my classical education, I sat in a seminar where the presenters kept telling us to use our scholar skills. So I finally raised my hand and asked where I could find these scholar skills.

The presenters, including the founder of my college, gave me a blank stare. Nobody had an answer for me.

I could have just brushed this problem aside. But I cared about being the best student I could be! I was making a lot of sacrifices in time, effort, and money to be in those classes, and I had a vision of what this education would do for my family. So I went and found the answers myself.

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AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Episode 169: Vision

Mothers of Creation Invitation

AUDREY: Mom, this fall I'm going to be back in the gorgeous library ballroom in Provo, Utah, spending one transformative day with women just like you, connecting, growing, and learning how to be the creators God divinely designed us to be. If you want an opportunity to spend one powerful day with some of the most incredible women around who will inspire and uplift you, and if you want to be guided through a process that will give you the tools and principles to turn your persistent problems into new vision and forward momentum, then I invite you to join us Saturday, September 26th in Utah. Me and my team of mentors have literally been preparing for an entire year, and I want you there. And I can promise you that your life will never be the same. You will walk out of that room, just as hundreds of other women have, with new hope not only for yourself and your family, but for the future of our culture and nation. Because there really are moms out there just like you who want to overcome their challenges and make a positive difference. Tickets are selling fast. Check out the link around this video or go to themissiondrivenmom.com to grab your seat while there are still some available. And I will see you there.

Introduction

AUDREY: The dreams you carry and nourish in your heart are the most noble part of you. When you don't have a vision, those dreams cannot be a reality. So what is vision? How can we develop it? And how is our perspective here at The Mission Driven Mom different than what you might hear at other places? That's what I'm going to talk to you about for a few minutes today.

What Vision Is

AUDREY: Beyond just the ability to see with our eyes, vision means the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination, wisdom, and intelligence. In The 8th Habit, Stephen Covey warned:

"Vision is seeing with the mind's eye what is possible in people, in projects, in causes, and in enterprises. When people have no vision, when they neglect the development of the mind's capacity to create, they fall prey to the human tendency toward victimism."

AUDREY: We've talked a lot about victimism, or our victim mindset, or acting like a victim, on this podcast over the last couple of months. We've explored how this pulls us into drama and steals our power and keeps us stuck. We've even spent a bit of time talking about the victim types and which ones we show up as, and we've gone on and on about how we need to be creators instead. Well, just like many others who have taught about creativity and vision, Covey also affirms that vision is the antidote to drama and the victim mindset.

AUDREY: And of course, at our Mothers of Creation event this fall, we'll be spending one transformational day going through all the steps necessary to move from victimism and drama to creation and vision. I hope you plan to be there. But for today, I want to spend a few minutes diving a little deeper into the vision component of this journey.

AUDREY: I want to start with a model Covey shares in his book The 8th Habit about how the four key areas of our lives work together and help us to create and cast vision, striving toward what matters most and becoming more than we were. Here's how this model works. There are four aspects to our whole being: the body, the mind, the heart, and the spirit. And each area has a need, an attribute, and what Covey calls a voice, or the expression of this part of us in the world. I'll explain them one by one.

The Body: The Need to Live

AUDREY: First, the physical body. Our physical body has a need to live. The voice or expression of this need to live is to take action, and it is through our body that we do the things that need to be done. The attribute that enables the body to thrive and to do the things it needs to do is discipline. With little discipline, we accomplish little, and sometimes even put our own health or lives at risk. With great discipline, we can accomplish great things. Covey said about discipline:

"Discipline is willpower embodied. Only the disciplined are truly free. The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites, and passions."

AUDREY: Horace Mann once said:

"In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle."

The Heart: The Need to Love

AUDREY: The second aspect is your heart. Your heart has a need to love. The expression of that need to love, when properly understood, is taking actions of love toward ourselves and others by meeting real needs. I don't have time to get into this today. We talk about it a lot in the MDM Academy. If you want to understand it a little better, you can go to our website and sign up for my on-demand training.

AUDREY: That being said, in order for our hearts to love, it needs the attribute of passion. Covey said about passion:

"Passion comes from the heart and is manifested as optimism, excitement, emotional connection, and determination. It fires unrelenting drive."

AUDREY: Courage is the essence of passion. So taking action and doing what needs to be done to love properly, regardless of fears, obstacles, objections, or risks.

The Spirit: The Need to Leave a Legacy

AUDREY: Three, your spirit, which has the need to leave a legacy, and the expression of this need is conscience, working to guide the spirit in the right direction. The attribute that makes this possible is what Covey calls educating the conscience. Again, we don't have time to get into it today, but we all have what he calls a social and a divine conscience. It is the divine conscience within that must be nurtured by truth and goodness so that it can guide us to goals worthy of us. Immanuel Kant said:

"I am constantly amazed by two things: the starry heavens above and the moral law within."

AUDREY: If you've spent much time around us at The Mission Driven Mom, you know we work to champion the natural moral law and its governing principles. We strive to inspire women to listen to that still, small voice that wants to guide our actions toward what is good, true, and beautiful.

The Mind: The Need to Learn

AUDREY: Number four, our minds. Our minds have the need to learn. The voice or expression of all we learn and know and are is our talents. And vision is the attribute of the mind that takes the action of the physical body, the passions of the heart, and the conscience of the spirit, and brings them together in an aspiration bigger than all of those parts, bigger than we are, and puts all the parts of us to work toward a future worth creating. Aristotle taught:

"When talents and needs of the world cross, therein lies your vocation."

How the Four Work Together

AUDREY: So to recap what Stephen Covey just taught us: vision is the spiritual creation. This is where it all begins. And discipline is the physical creation, making the decisions and doing the tasks to realize the vision. Passion is the fuel. A constant [image of the] vision generates passion to keep going. And conscience is the guide along the way as we're making decisions. You listen closely as your conscience guides you to an end that blesses everyone, a true win-win. Covey said:

"When conscience governs vision, discipline, and passion, leadership endures and changes the world for good."

AUDREY: In other words, moral authority makes formal authority work. [As moms,] we need to be the leaders and visionaries of our lives and our families. By virtue of being mom, we have some formal authority, but Covey teaches that formal authority doesn't work without the moral authority underneath it. And that moral authority comes from working intentionally with all four parts of your nature and submitting them all to a vision worthy of you and your family.

Where We Differ From Other Voices

AUDREY: This is where we at The Mission Driven Mom deviate from other voices you might have heard discussing vision. We don't say follow your heart and live your truth. We don't believe that you can do anything you want to do or be anything you might want to be. Those ways of thinking and believing are unhelpful and unhealthy. We do believe you can become the very best version of yourself. We do believe you are different than others for important reasons. We do believe that you are uniquely designed and called to a work that will bless you and others. And we do believe that recognition and adherence to truth makes all of this possible.

Imagination and the Vision of Great Leaders

AUDREY: Now, going back to vision: it is the spiritual creation. This is why, as Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Great ideas, great beauty, great art, nature, sacrifice, service, great deeds, courage, and virtue. All of these fuel the imagination. Great leaders have vision. They hold an image of the future they are creating in their minds, and they share it with others. "I have a dream" [cemented] a nation in turmoil. Your mind needs vision, and vision is fueled by ideas and imagination. That's why ongoing lifelong learning from the greatest minds that have ever lived elevates our minds, and it nurtures the kinds of visions we can have.

AUDREY: How can you make headway in leading yourself unless you can clearly articulate to yourself where you're going to go? How can we become a certain kind of person unless we know who that person is? Think of all the teenagers seeking self-knowledge and self-acceptance who have no vision for who they are becoming, and therefore take their view from those around them, listening to the social rather than the divine conscience. Now, how can you successfully lead your family unless you cast a vision for them of who they can be together? How can you lead in your community, church, school, or anywhere else unless there is a spiritual, intangible, worthy ideal for people to strive to realize?

AUDREY: And in [source unclear] we read this:

"A visionary is supposed to have a vision of the future. Ideas govern the world. The power they have is phenomenal. It is therefore necessary to repeatedly fill our minds with thoughts of service, abundance, and success to break free of the gravitational pull of our negative thoughts. Eventually we replace the old negative thoughts with a new positive self-image. Each new thought has energy, and through some mysterious law of attraction it draws objects, beings, and circumstances of a similar nature to it like a magnet. Negative thoughts attract negative experiences, whereas positive thoughts attract positive experiences."

AUDREY: Which we say here comes from God.

Envisioning: Creating It Spiritually First

AUDREY: Now, envisioning is holding the vision, using your imagination to see it before it happens, to work out the details beforehand so you always have that clarity with which you make decisions and course correct along the way. This is the only way you can bring something into the material, physical world. You must create it spiritually first, just like you would draw a floor plan of a home before you built it.

AUDREY: You moms know all about this. You had a vision of motherhood. You make decisions about when and where to become pregnant and have a child. You held a vision of that child and prepared diligently for their arrival, and you loved them even before you knew them. That's what creating is about. It's about love. We love something enough to bring it into being. And how do we actually do that? We do the mental work of clarifying the vision and holding it in our minds until it is worked out in reality.

The Scholar Skills Story

AUDREY: I've told this story probably more than once on this podcast. When I was just beginning my classical education, I attended a small seminar my school was holding. It was there that I was continually encouraged to use scholar skills to get through my studies more successfully. When I finally raised my hand and asked where I could find scholar skills so I could implement them, the presenters, including the founder of my college, gave me a blank stare and had no answers for me.

AUDREY: I could have just brushed this problem aside, but I cared about being the best student I could be. I wanted to see truth. I was making a lot of sacrifices in time, effort, and money to be taking these classes, and the quality of my education really mattered to me. I needed to do it right. I had a vision of what this education would do for me and my family, and that meant I needed to do the work to figure out how to make the most of it.

AUDREY: So I researched, I read books, I talked to other students, and over time these scholar skills, these tools for lifelong learning, began to emerge, and I got more and more and more out of the time I spent studying. Eventually I felt like I had good enough information that I wanted to share it with other students who could benefit from it. Now I had a vision of what these principles could do for others. In order to make this a reality, I had to do something I had never even considered doing before. I had to create a class. I did this and asked the school if they'd offer it. They said they'd see if it was of any interest to the student body. It turned out to be hugely popular, and then I was traveling to several states teaching the course I created.

Vision in Community, Family, and Marriage

AUDREY: Later I attended another seminar, and I wanted the people there to be able to connect because the seminar was over. I knew that what I could do was offer my home for book discussions. At the first meeting in my home, I cast a vision of what I learned and what I wanted from this experience. The book club grew and grew, and over the next year I learned more and more about what we needed to do next. I spent the next summer [organizing, planning meetings,] and cast a vision for our community.

AUDREY: With our family, we did the work to create a family statement. We repeated to our children over and over again that there is truth and it can make them free, that family matters most, and that they would always be there for each other. And the more clear our vision was of the kind of family we wanted to have, the more we could clearly communicate it and create it. And when it looked like things were not working, or were not going in the direction we wanted them to go, we held our vision before us and took actions to help them realize it.

AUDREY: In my marriage, I repeatedly shared with my husband the kind of [unclear] I wanted to have with him, and that he would [unclear] to hold a shared vision of where we're trying to go, and discuss openly and honestly all the healing and work we needed to do to get us there.

AUDREY: Of course, I've tried to repeatedly create and hold a vision of myself before myself, asking myself questions like: Who do I want to be? What is future Audrey like? How can I pave her way? How can I make her life better? How can I make decisions today that will set her up for success?

AUDREY: Vision works everywhere, and envisioning is the tool by which you hold it in your mind and you live it with intention. This is mental work. It's meeting your real mental needs. It's what we overlook so often, but it's the only way to build a life of love.

The Two Visions

AUDREY: [Unclear,] we must hold two visions. What is it that we are creating? But also, who are we going to be on the way to creating that vision, and who will we become when that vision is realized? Covey said:

"The most important vision of all is to develop a sense of self, a sense of your own destiny, a sense of your unique mission and role in life, a sense of purpose and meaning."

AUDREY: Here at The Mission Driven Mom, we believe that too. It's in our name. It's the title of my book. It's deeply ingrained in everything we do. It is our earnest hope for you that you will do the work to seek out and fulfill the unique contributions only you can make, using your discipline, talents, conscience, and vision. Because when you don't do that, we all miss out.

Closing

AUDREY: Thank you for joining me today for a deeper dive into victim mindset, drama, creation, vision, and exactly how you can build a vision worthy of your precious time and life energy. Please join us at the Mothers of Creation event this fall in Provo, Utah for one transformational day. I'm excited to [see you there].