Visionary lifelines

There are those moments in your life that you never forget. They can be painful or happy moments. But they certainly have a crucial impact on the rest of your life. These moments of insight, of clarity you will remember best. They form lines of force that give meaning to your life. Insofar as these moments form a succession of insights, we can speak of visionary lifelines.

Lifelines can be composed of selected moments that give powerful meaning to our lives. For example, visionary lifelines are based on skills, passions, talents, hopes and qualities that are discovered at some point in time and that influence the progression of our lives.

In the practice of Visionary People Mentoring, visionary lifelines are all about visionary power.

“Visionary power is the power of the vision we have about our lives.”

Visionary power is about imagining our present and future so clearly that we can successfully connect our life goals to them. But this clear representation is always the result of the strength we gain from processing our past. In other words, visionary power can draw a line between past, present and future.

Visionary power can be explained in several ways. In this blog I describe visionary power from what I call the visionary lifeline. To illustrate this, I want to put it to the test and dive into my own lifeline. Or should I say lifelines?

Lifelines are the result of our reflections on the meaningful moments in our lives. When I think of a ‘written out lifeline’, I’m talking about five to ten of these moments, while you can record several of these lifelines in the order of an entire life. They may be new ones, or they may ‘overwrite’ older lifelines. There is evolution and different expressions possible when recording visionary lifelines.

I see my own visionary lifeline as a continuation of experiences that deepen my thoughts about how people, the world and the environment form a complex path to peace and understanding.

The theme of peace has fascinated me all my life. In recent years, the themes of freedom and equality have also been added. These are important themes for those who strive for a better, just world. But they are not simple.

Take the example of freedom. It is not self-evident to combine both aspects of freedom and justice. We all know people who impose justice while sacrificing freedom. Others, on the other hand, tend towards freedom without regard to justice. But justice and free thinking should not be dualities. They are degrees of one vision that believes a better world is possible.

To imagine my life with these basic values for myself, I like to look back to my youth. These are the years of my first visionary lifeline and the early revelation of these values to me.

We should not skip our childhood in establishing our visionary lifeline. They lay important foundations in our lives. My own childhood, like most of us, was influenced by two people. You guessed it right. By my parents.

“Visionary lifelines are defined by skills, passions, talents, hopes and qualities that are discovered at a given moment and that influence the progress of our lives.”

LOVE FOR CREATING

Should I start with my mother? It was she who taught me the love of nature. This love has remained an important value to me throughout my life. But how could my mother add this value to my life? Very simple: through the experience itself.

I took many walks in nature with my mother and sisters. On those trips we explored nature near where we lived. Later I was big enough to go alone. How I enjoyed the many voyages of discovery I made. I soon started enjoying all the beauty around me. I spontaneously wanted to enjoy nature and help the neighbour farmer with his work. Sometimes my youngest sister was there too. But most of the time I was alone.

I will never forget those moments: me and the graceful nature. On the grazing meadows, in the adjacent forest and at the edge of the babbling stream. Then at the end of the day I was treated to the wise words of the old farmer and a portion of fresh milk. How simple and beautiful life can be.

My mother initiated me into this enjoyment of ‘living with nature’ and meeting ‘people of nature’. At a young age she showed me the way to the fertile fields and to the blossoming of nature.

Soon I started to observe nature itself up close. Nature was peace for me. Especially butterflies. Because we find them in all colors and because they are everywhere, but always without breaking the silence of nature. When rain and storms want to rush us back into the house, butterflies are the first to warn us. As quietly as they are present, they hide under a tree when the peace is broken by the brute force of nature.

Around the same time, when I was about ten years old, I asked my mother for a book on herbs. She happily bought the book for me and I started growing my own herbs. The future lies in the hands of nature, I felt that, because it is permanently new. So let me create nature, I thought to myself. Nature is indeed creative and I dreamed of becoming an inventor.

This was my first vision of life. She made me connect my love for nature with my love for creating new things. Both would bring peace, freedom and sincerity. For myself and for the others. But at that time it was not yet clear to me what exactly I wanted to invent. I thought it would have to do with changing the world into a better place for everyone.

A SMALL GESTURE MAKES STRONG

There is also the role of my father. That one was different. I think mainly of the years between the ages of 6 and 10. These years have left a mark on my relationship with my father. This was because I had the daily task of waking him up in the afternoon. My father always slept until noon because he worked nights. When I came to his bedside and was alone with him, he had made it a tradition, a ritual in a sense, to talk to me in a way that promised, “My boy, you will be famous.”

I listened attentively when my father spoke to me like that. Because he wasn’t a talker and it seemed like he was sharing an important secret. My father is still not a talker. So when he spoke, it was important.

My father spends his days doing his things, while thinking and talking – expressing himself in words – is often only about practical matters. He always talks at a minimum.

But sometimes it’s more than just ordinary, it’s something intimate. He then expresses himself in his own way. For example, when I was a child, he did not fail to ask us, me, my sisters and my brother, for hugs several times a day. As he handed these out, he graciously whispered funny nicknames he had come up with for us. I had a strong feeling at the time that my father did nothing without meaning it. It was a sincerity that I gratefully accepted from him.

These, for me, visionary memories, like others from my father, have made me realize that you don’t have to say much to touch someone with your words, to give someone life force and insight. A small gesture, a hug, a word of hope, a smile, a nickname, etc. are all eloquent conveyors of visionary power.

My father taught me to look for the inner value of people who express themselves with little or alternative ‘language’ (art even). There have been times when, as a young man, I needed advice from my father. But my father is not a learned man. For example, he was unable to help me with my university courses. Though, sometimes I needed advice about relationships with people. Like when I had a conflict with someone. My father always said the same thing about conflict, no matter the problem: “My son, look for the good in that person.” These are words that have helped me a lot in my life.

“I listened carefully when my father spoke to me like that. Because he wasn’t a talker and it was like he was sharing an important secret. My father is still not a talker. So, when he spoke, it was important.”

THE GERD OF SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS

They were intimate conversations between me and my father. They made me look at people with positive eyes. It was different from my mother, who mainly let me discover the peace and creativity of nature. But both of them, my mother and father, have made me grow in visionary power in their own way.

We all need a high dose of shared visionary power in our lives to be successful in whatever we do. It doesn’t matter where we end up to make this happen because we deal with people everywhere. We cannot do this alone. We must act with complete confidence in our own visionary power and that of others. In my opinion, we must add to this the environment because we can interact peacefully and creatively with it if we want to translate our visionary power into sustainable success.

by Thierry Limpens

Update 13-13-2022, 13-8-2023, 18-9-2023