Who could possibly be like Elon Musk? The eccentric oddball with the outlandish ideas. No one ever really knows what he’s going to say or where his head is actually at. People like predictable and Elon Musk is everything but.
Anyone want to go to Mars? Elon Musk wants 1 million there by 2050.
Self-driving cars? Sounded pretty crazy 20 years ago. Well, they are coming….and soon.
Who is his 1910 counterpart? It’s probably too obvious. Henry Ford.
Ford, the automaker who made cars and tractors mainstream, seemed more than a little crazy back in the early 1900s. Yet, his vision was a transformative one. It changed the world forever.
Looking back it doesn’t seem like such an outlandish idea, but at the time horses had been the main source of farm labor and local transportation for quite a long time. His idea would change everything.
People like Elon Musk and Henry Ford are visionaries. They see a future few others could imagine. If they could, they couldn’t even begin to imagine how to make it a reality.
How do you reimagine the future? Dream it. Visualize it. Do it.
Dream It.
First, you need to dream it up. Where do you want to go? Don’t temper these dreams. Don’t even bother being realistic. Just dream it. How do you do this? Create solitude. Time to think. Time to process. Time for your brain to get creative. This solitude doesn’t even need to be alone. It just refers to time spent in-your-head without any input. Solitude deprivation is a surprisingly large problem.
Henry Ford understood the importance of solitude, downtime, and creativity. He actually encouraged his executives to clear their desks, put their feet up, and just dream. Imagine a job where you were encouraged to take 30-60 minutes a day to just think and be bored. This is what visionaries do. They give their brain the chance to dream.
Visualize It.
Once you’ve dreamed it up, it is time to visualize actually accomplishing it. No one did this better than Michael Phelps. Every night for years he would visualize his races before falling asleep. He visualized a perfect race and, of course, he always won. Is it any wonder that when he raced for real, he almost always won.
Visualization is so powerful. In fact, your brain actually interprets visualization as if it actually happened. Struggling with a guitar riff? Visualize playing it correctly and your brain will actually learn how to play it better. Simply visualizing practicing guitar could make you a better guitar player. It sounds a bit crazy, but it’s true.
Create Your Future.
All that is left is to do it. Henry Ford did it. Elon Musk is doing it. Will you? First, you need to know where you want to go. Is it Mars? Probably not. Is it financial freedom? Possibly. Imagine it. Visualize it. Then, make a plan and do it.