3 Reasons Why Vision and Goals Go Hand-in-Hand

Anything worth doing, every worthwhile venture, starts with a great vision and goal.

You have to see the thing you want in your mind first. You have to imagine it. Then you have to walk out your vision—what you have imagined—one step at a time, and write out your goal.

Therefore, a powerful vision is a must for any person, group or organization that wants to accomplish something that they’ve never done before.

But establishing concrete goals is also required to make your vision more than a just a fleeting dream. In fact, dreams are useless if you don’t follow through on them.

A goal-setting process results in a plan to help make dreams come true.

Goals are a roadmap to achieve your vision.

It’s possible for people who set no goals at all to move from point A to point B and accomplish a few things.

However, the likelihood of any significant achievement without setting goals is quite small. Imagine what those same goal-less people could accomplish if they set definite objectives.

Goal-setting would create a roadmap to guide them to the place they want to be. That’s what setting goals will do for you.

Goals help produce clarity of purpose.

Most people want a better life and feel they are capable of a life far more vibrant than the one they currently live—but they don’t know how to get it.

I believe that success in life is in direct proportion to our clarity of purpose, and our level of passion, belief, and action.

Studies have revealed time and time again that high performers in life have a clear vision and set goals for what they want.

I’m putting the finishing touches on a book about a high performer whom I knew very well. My father, Ermon K. Jones, made history when the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that he and my mother, Blanche Hillen Jones, had the right to buy the home of their choice in a new, suburban housing development that refused to sell to African Americans.

My father’s earliest vision for his life was doing his best to make the most of every opportunity.

So he set goals: doing well in school, excelling on the basketball court, graduating from college with a bachelor’s and master’s degree.

My dad met each of those aspirations and he was viewed as a tremendous success along the way.

But the most basic opportunities a successful young man expects were blocked when Dad tried to buy a new house for his young family (which included me and my younger sister) and was rejected by the school superintendent for a teaching position at the high school where he had been a sports star.

Those who turned him down plainly stated their reason for rejection: the rules said “no Negroes.”

Such blatant racism, in a part of the country that was supposed to be better than that, gave my father a higher vision for his life: opening the doors of opportunity to everyone, regardless of race or background.

He became a dynamic civil rights leader in the 1960s and ‘70s, serving as president of the NAACP in Neptune and Asbury Park, N.J., and reaching new goals that he set for his higher purpose.

FIND OUT HOW GOAL-SETTING CAN BOOST YOUR RESULTS 300%!

Setting Goals are about Igniting Change

My dad learned that setting goals usually means being placed outside of your comfort zone. This is especially true for leaders, and it can be scary and overwhelming.

But change comes with the territory when you’re in leadership. And the truth is that the
best leaders are those who ignite change!

Of course, not everybody likes change. But change is the one true thing that people can depend on. It will often put you in the neighborhood of the unknown. But that which scares us can also be what gets us to take action.

That’s where the power of getting outside of your comfort zone comes into play. People will never push forward if they don’t try something that they’re unfamiliar with.

This is why it’s called the comfort zone and is why it is used as a reference to breaking through. The new thing that you try may not work as you planned, but you will learn something at every point of the journey.

Your new adventure will likely be the kind that you can tell your grandkids about—leaving them awestruck. There is nothing more powerful than that!

Learn more about my father’s goal-setting in my upcoming book, Justice on the Jersey Shore: How Ermon K. Jones Ignited Change and Won (Archway Publishing).

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