Change from the Inside Out

SEVEN

What Change Will Bring

STEP 2. Envision the Future State

All of us have it in us to be visionaries. We think it’s just a few people—Steve Jobs, say, or Nelson Mandela, or Marie Curie. But everyone has the capacity to envision futures that don’t yet exist. We do it starting when we’re little kids and we want a bike for our birthday or a special superhero party. We see it clearly: how it will look and feel, how our friends will react, how excited we’ll be—how the cake will taste or how the wind will feel in our face as we ride down the street on our cool new bike. This is visioning.

The problem is, as grown-ups we often stop ourselves from doing this kind of visioning—it doesn’t seem realistic, or we get caught in focusing on what could ...