6. Team- and network-building ability.
We all know wild dreamers who didn’t have a team. Your team-building ability will dramatically enable or disable the size of your vision. In addition, I am amazed by the increase of wisdom, access, ideas and opportunities that come through active network cultivation. Wouldn’t you expect the vision of a pastor who networks to be bigger than one who doesn’t bother?
7. A goal-oriented outlook daily.
Every person who achieves a big vision has a basic recipe for attacking the 24-hour unit of time we all possess. What is yours? I have three kinds of days in my life (focused, buffer and free). On buffer days, I determine the two most important things to accomplish by 11:00 a.m.
8. Margin to write down your dreams.
At first, I wanted to say “discipline to write down your dreams.” But discipline is overrated in this way. The bigger challenge is margin. People enjoy dreaming and writing down their “wish list” when given the time. That doesn’t take discipline—it’s one of the most exciting things you can do! Over and over again, you will see the common thread of big visionaries: Put it on paper.
9. Recovery from big failures.
Don’t underestimate the power of a good failure. Failures remind you that life is short. Failures expand your pain threshold. Failures purify and humble and bring powerful perspective. Sometimes a failure in one area or with one dream can increase the size of another.
10. Graciousness and kindness to others.
I suspect there are people who excel at the first nine factors, but, in the end, they just aren’t that nice. They don’t care about others. They don’t stay connected to their teams and their friends. They are so driven, they lose the human element in everything they do. So you might not think something this simple would make the “big vision” list. But I can’t shake it.
