I just saw the much talked about documentary by Al Gore on global warming. And, I better first mention that I was skeptical. See, I’ve never been a fan of political force as an agent of positive change, and I’ve always seen environmental issues largely from the side of the entrepreneur. Not that I don’t value the environment, I do. I just 1) don’t put much faith in government solutions, 2) don’t typically trust politicians who give good sounding causes to expand government’s power (and their own), and primarily 3) see and feel the detrimental effect that turning to government for answers has on humanity. I’ll get back to all that later.

I loved the documentary. First, it really made me think. Second, Mr. Gore and his crew chose not to lampoon their adversaries with cheap shots, present the ideas as The truth or their solutions as The solution. Yes, it appears to be a marketing piece for a future presidential bid (and a brilliant one at that). But most of all, I was inspired by the stand this man has taken, the path he has walked and how he has leveraged technology to share his vision. He’s been laughed at for decades for his stand on this issue, turned on, rejected, etc., and still he’s standing.

You really couldn’t ask for a better campaign commercial, but I’m not turned off by that simply because at the same time its’ killer marketing piece for his vision of positive change. Brilliant. Further, it’s an excellent example of how a single visionary has the power to change the world.

I understand now more the deep passion (displayed as frustration and anger) a friend of mine has when she finds me with a door open and the AC on (and why she didn’t laugh when I said, but I’m cooling the earth’s atmosphere to help stop global warming). I have a newfound respect for all the visionaries out there who labor tirelessly to share their message–their call to action. If that’s you reading this, I honor you.

Beyond all of that, what I saw from this documentary is a great parallel between the environment of our planet and the environment of our minds. Few see the full magnitude of the extent to which our survival is threatened by other technologies run rampant. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., noted 40 years ago, “We have guided missiles, and misguided men.”

What is happening with global warming and the environment is but a microcosm of a much larger problem. Al Gore’s frustration in reaching his fellow human beings is the frustration felt by most visionaries–everyday people who choose to stand for something worthwhile and take bold action to make a difference. There is a great divide in humanity at present.

I submit that just like there is a direct correlation between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and the temperature of the earth, there is a direct correlation between a) the levels of power that political, military and other outside forces are given, and b) the amount of war, disease, crime, terrorism, poverty, depression, drug addiction, etc., we see. More specifically, the more we turn to technology-empowered external authorities to solve our problems, the less we look within to be the change and cause the change. And the less we look within, the more we suffer, and the more we turn to irrational excapes, actions and justifications.

Just as Al has found that people not only need to see and feel the magnitude of the problem, they need to see and feel there is actually something they can do about it; so too have we at VisionForce found that it’s not enough to present the problem in a way it hits home for the individual–we must communicate in a way that has people seeing and feeling that they can do something about it (yes, our boot camps are powerful in that regard, but the whole world can’t attend “boot camp!”).
I’ve a general aversion to looking outside ourselves to other forces for solutions, as it overlooks our greatest natural resource for positive change–the force within us. The force of our own conscience, consciousness and vision. There are ways we can “activate” the vision force (sounds like a super hero cartoon action) to cause a ground swell of change.

Because there are many more “inconvenient truths” out there that we are facing in these times of accelerating technology. The world doesn’t need more people to compromise their power, freedom, vision and self-reliance in order to fit in and be comfortable. The world needs more people willing to stand for what matters in the face of it all, and share a vision that lifts even their adversaries to greatness. More on all this later.

Comments? Post below.

1 – You are one of the few who can’t turn your back on the opportunity you have to do something great in this lifetime. You’re committed to doing something great–something born of your own vision (your vision for your life, your family, your company, your community or humanity).

2 – You’re frustrated in a world that rewards conformity and tolerates mediocrity. You’re compassionate to the situations of others, yet you’re unsettled by the way conformity and mediocrity has human beings staying small.

3 – You know that what stands between you and the better world you envision is really but one thing: your own limits. And you know those limits are but an illusion. Thus, you are committed to transcending your limits to be the change you seek in the world. Deeply committed.

4 – Thus, human development is not something new to you. You eat it up. You don’t just have an intellectual fancy for human development ideas, you do the work, you take the action.

5 – Having been someone who takes action to transcend your limitations, you see how much more is possible–not just for yourself, but for the world at large. The more you see your own evolution, the more you see for all of humanity.

6 – This vision, you know, is more than a dream. People in your life may see you as an idealist, a dreamer, a rebel or maybe even a nut. But their opinions of you are based on their own fears to live from their own vision–and you know that. So you don’t give much credence to their doubts and fears.

7 – Yet it bothers you. You give so much in life, you sacrifice, you work, you commit at such a high level that you may often find yourself alone, disheartened or even in despair. For you have no comfort zone to retreat to. You can’t pretend you don’t see a greater vision. You won’t pretend. You won’t turn around and live a “normal” life.

8 – Until your dying day, you will keep standing for the vision you see–for what you know to be possible. You are a visionary–a revolutionary. The world is born by those with your courage, your will, your love. There you stand, you can do no other.

9 – You know that if more people could but see even a little more of your vision, it would change their life. It would change the world. You sense something is deeply missing from traditional self-improvement methods. You don’t want to just succeed inside the prevailing system–you want to change the system or give birth to a new one. And you know that takes an entirely different set of tools for thinking, being and communicating.

10 – Words like “change,” “revolution,” and “transformation” don’t scare you. “Bring it on,” you say. You welcome the new, the different, the complex.

11 – You likely have little company. You have few you can talk to who really relate.

12 – The idea of arriving at a final truth or solution annoys you or humours you. You know it’s a fallacy that the fearful cling to. To be human, you’re sure, is to be alive with the quest and the question, learning and evolving continually. The thought of pretending you have the answer repulses you.

13. So you don’t try to sell people on your worldview. You don’t have a need to change their beliefs. You are comfortable in the question, in the unknown. That is your home. It’s where you live every day.

14. You know fear. You seldom ignore your feelings. Rather, you face them. You feel them. And yet you don’t define yourself as them. You define yourself by your actions.

15. You are someone I wish to get to know. Together, we can change the world. We can create a future where every human being naturally develops a healthy, free, independent mind. Where children are honored as the visionaries they have the innate potential to be. A world where human beings live at the edge of their potential as conscious creators in peace and prosperity.

Speak up! Use the comment link below.

The world can’t see your vision, yet you are out there in the land of being misunderstood. You could conform to their judgments, their laughter, their look of doubt, their skepticism… and retreat to a comfortable path, where you’re easily accepted in society and your communities.

Yet you choose to stand. You choose to be true. You can’t deny the vision you see, even if they don’t see it. You know the difference it could make in the world. And the pain of rejection and judgment is a small price to pay. You’ll pay it. All your life if you have to.

You’re a visionary. You are one of the few human beings in the early twentieth century who won’t deny your power to impact the world. And so, you have the power to move the world.

VisionForce.com is for the few, the courageous, the visionaries.

If you see such a vision, what’s in your way of stepping out, standing up, speaking up more than you do? Your conscious limitations are the greatest barrier to creating what you see. Your conscious evolution must be one of your highest priorities. We’ve designed the free Power To Stand on-line course for you to help you in your evolution from a position-based consciousness to a stand-based consciousness. It’s for the revolutionary who knows that yesterday’s ways of thinking about causing change just won’t work in the 21st Century.

If you’re not yet sure what your purpose or vision is… if you don’t yet feel deeply called to step into the unknown guided by a vision that moves you, consider that it won’t happen by staying comfortable. All there is to do is face what there is to face in a way that has your vision emerge. The Visionary Mind program was designed to have you experience your call to greatness–to have you experience your own vision on a level that calls to you so deeply that you find a new power and freedom, and with it a profound responsibility to “be the change.”

As you may have noticed, VisionForce.com is evolving in some major ways. Along with Vision Force’s evolution comes my own.

Starting with this blog post, I am going to be chronicaling the intimate details of my personal thoughts, insights and experiences in the creation of VisionForce and our mission to evolve humanity and the world we live in.

Here’s the email I sent to Vision Force Newsletter subscribers today :

It was August of 1996.

Exactly 10 years ago.

The seeds of what is now VisionForce were planted,
and the missing piece of the puzzle for my model
of human consciousness snapped into place.

But this was when the real struggle began for me. It
continues to this day, and right now, it seems as
if it is just months away from being over.

I believe the concepts and methods we work with
in our boot camps and other programs can literally
change the world–evolve humanity beyond this point.

I sensed it 10 years ago, and I’ve been struggling
ever since to bring these ideas to the world.

If you’ve ever had a long shot dream,
a far out idea that you knew could change the world,
or a vision that you felt compelled to devote your
life to, then I think you’ll be able to relate.

I want to start opening up to you, sharing much more
of my personal journey, as you’re likely someone who
can relate (or you wouldn’t be on my list).

==August 1996==

I was reading an obscure book from a brilliant theorist who
studied the history of psychology. His book was explaining
his radical theory on the development of human consciousness,
but…

It was something else in his book that hit me… and
all the pieces started coming together.

Human behavior–especially irrational human behavior–
had long perplexed me. I just didn’t get, from the time
I was a teenager, why intelligent adults acted as
irrationally as they so often did.

So when I found ideas that exposed such irrationality
and offered practical ideas and methods for understanding
it at a deeper level and evolving beyond it, I delved
into them.

In this particular book, the author presented a model of
human consciousness that when integrated into my other
ideas and conceptual models of consciousness, just clicked.

Everything came together for me at that point and I
saw a vision for how I could help humanity evolve
forward beyond the gross irrationality and destruction
we see today.

In the years to come, I developed the “Wealth Warrior”
concepts and technology. To me, wealth meant an abundance
of values, and a warrior was someone who stood for
their values from a place of ultimate responsibility.

In 1997, I set out to take my concepts and methods to
the world. What I lacked, however, was the business
experience to make it successful.

That year, I quite the landscaping business I’d had while
doing my research, and went for broke. I borrowed
from everyone I could. In less than 12 months I was
so deep in the hole that everyone advised me to
declare bankruptcy.

I refused. I did throw in the towel on the business
venture, and I started another business–again a
landscaping business–determined this time to hone
my business skills and build up enough financial
resources to be a success the next time around.

I’d lost the trust of family, friends and business
associates from the failure to succeed with the
Wealth Warrior concepts in 1997. It was one of the
most difficult periods of my life. The people who
had so trusted me and believed in me, turned away.

4.5 long, hard years later, I was ready to give it
another go.

In November 2002, I held my first ever “boot camp,”
a “Wealth Warrior Boot Camp.” It was the first time
I’d taken my human development concepts and methods
public.

I didn’t know if it would be a success or not. I
had simply promised everyone who attended that they
would get more value that what they paid, if they
simply gave me one weekend.

It was a huge success. I was without self-consciousness,
and just “showed up” as exactly who I needed to be. It
was the most amazing experience for me–I was powerful
in a way I’d never known myself before.

That weekend 12 people I’d not known before left with
their lives changed, most calling that weekend the most
powerful experience of their life.

That was it for me. I knew I had to go for it this time.

Did I have enough business experience yet? Did I have
the financial resources in place to make it happen?
Would I fail again–harder this time?

I went for it.

That was nearly 4 years ago now. Over these last 4
years, I’ve faced just about every obstacle you can
imagine.

We’re still struggling to find the best way to
communicate what our work offers people, and what
the best way to get the word out is.

Just last week I had a huge insight. When we first
started under the Wealth Warrior, not Vision Force,
model, most people assumed we dealt with financial
wealth.

And while it was true that many of our boot camp
graduates experienced huge financial successes with
their businesses afterwards, we didn’t teach people
anything about money.

It was all about their conscious framework–their
relationship to their values. That’s what made the
difference. All we did was use some simple exercises
and methods for thinking and communicating that got
people so deeply connected with their values (with
themselves) that everything else clicked into place.

Nevertheless, we were largely marketing to entrepreneurs
for the first few years, and so I tried to maintain
an image of a very financially successful enterprise.

When the truth was, I was living the garage entrepreneur
lifestyle, just fighting to do whatever I could to make
the business model work. Because I believe it’s by having a
successful organization that we were going to be able
to reach millions in a way that makes a difference.

The point I am getting to is that
it has been a struggle, and I still haven’t “figured it
all out.” I really don’t know what the best methods are to
share the powerful concepts and methods we’ve discovered.

I want to do it in such a way that everyone around the
world who wants to “be the change” can have access to
the most powerful tools for evolving themselves, for
keeping their vision alive and for standing in the face of
any inner challenges to make it happen.

These aren’t get right methods or self-help ideas. It’s
something much deeper, much larger, and I believe truly
revolutionary… a revolutionary advancement in human
consciousness.

This is what I like to call “visionary and revolutionary
training.”

It is my personal vision and my deep connection to
my values and my purpose that gives me the strength to
continue on, and to evolve, in the face of all the
challenges that arise.

That is what we offer. It’s the power to love (or become
deeply connected to what you value), the power to see
a vision that calls you from deep within, and the power
to stand–to stand–in the face of all adversity. That’s
it in a nutshell. Personally, I am unaware of more powerful
human development work that offers this.

So, I just wanted to invite you into my world. I don’t
want to pretend anymore that we’re anything we’re not.

I don’t want an illusion maintained that keeps you at a
distance, thinking there’s not much you can contribute
to this effort, when the truth is, this effort depends on
you.

We’re all in this together, so I want you to know that
there are plenty of ways we can work together to evolve
humanity and change the world.

I invite you to share this journey with me, one visionary
to another, as we here at VisionForce venture to make
this world a better place.

I’ll be journalling about my journey on our VisionForce
blog, here:

==> http://visionforce.com/

The VisionForce concepts and methods give a person with
new ideas the power to be true to his or her vision in
the face of all adversity. There is no amount of pain,
lack of sleep, fear, doubt, humiliation or anything else
that can keep me or anyone here at VisionForce from
continuing on with our vision.

I thank you for being someone who has trusted me, and us
here at VisionForce, over the years. Your one of thousands
on our email list, and I may not know you personally, and
still, you mean a lot to me.

Thank you again for your trust, your love and your support.

Michael
VisionForce.com

P.S. Your comments on our VisionForce blog are most
welcome. You’ve probably noticed a lot has been changing
over the last 6 months with VisionForce, and we can really
use your feedback as we go forward.

You gotta check this young man out.

I gave him the Vision Force 101 200 Mb download about 2 weeks ago (the precursor to Visionary Mind), and he’s already changing the world. Check out his blog today, and all the comments he’s getting.

Want to make it in on the first printing of our powerful new home study program: Visionary Mind? Hurry! I’m having a blast making the final edits. Soon, visionaries from around the world will be downloading their Visionary Minds… and getting them shipped to them in a box! How cool is that? .

I came across this letter in a post to the Power To Stand pod on Zaadz that I thought you’s appreciate. It’s a letter to you from Erika Harris of www.wordfire.net. Erika’s a spoken word artist in Chicago with something to say…

An Open Letter to Visionaries

“Today’s oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground.” (Author unkown)

Anyone who has ever accomplished anything of importance – especially to the benefit of others – has had to endure being misunderstood by those who just couldn’t get it.

There are some people who are actually driven by something much greater than self-absorption. These people have an Urge on the inside of them that haunts and compels them to make their Urge a reality. If you live with that incessant inner-pull, then this letter is for you. And if you’re someone who feels utterly pleased, or bored, with your life, and you have no idea of the Urge and Pull that I’m talking about… well, maybe you know a person like this. In which case, this letter will help you better understand and support the Visionary who is in your life.

So, at superficial glance, Dear Visionary, people may mistake you for a malcontent; as you’re always tinkering, exploring, creating and insisting upon the improvement of things. But that’s only because you so clearly see what can be. And you’ve accepted your participatory role in ushering in that possibility. You’ve taken responsibility for bringing it forth. And that really is the most important thing. Bringing it forth.

Whether you are an activist, artist, dreamer, entrepreneur, idealist, inventor, progressive parent, scholar, scientist, social reformer or some other wonderful label not mentioned (in which case, Name Yourself!), you owe it to the world to manifest your Urge. That Urge is not in you merely to disturb your sleep, take your mind captive, or make you appear preoccupied and restless most of the time. That Urge is in you to be developed and brought forth. A segment of the world’s population is in dire need of the Thing(s) you are meant to bring forth. And there is a degree of suffering that segment will endure unless and until you finish your Task.

Don’t let delays, criticism or alienation discourage you. Accept them as part of the course, and go on. Persist. Relentlessly. If you don’t do this, then you and the segment you were born to serve will remain unchanged. The Future, its History, and our Present, will all be a bit handicapped because of your withholding.

If you’ve been looking or waiting for a Decided Marker – a Sign – to legitimize your commitment to your Urge, receive this letter as that Sign. Receive these words as a big kick from the Universe telling you that NOW is your time. Now is your time to give yourself over to that Inner Task you’ve been carrying around for years.

Giving yourself over to your Inner Task is not a grand and dramatic gesture. It is, instead, precise and subtle. It is listening like you’ve never listened before. It is, maybe for the first time in your life, allowing yourself to be guided, taught and ignited by something only you can see. And because only you can see it, only you can validate it. You have to leave the safe shores of external affirmation, and go into the deep waters of self assurance. The only way you can convert your Inner Task into an Outer Contribution is to absolutely believe in its value and worth – perhaps years before anyone else will or can. You have to be confident in a journey that has no map. But you need no map, because your confidence doesn’t come from the paths blazed by others. It comes from a New Land only seen by you. And you have within you all that you need to take us to that New Land with you. We are ready and waiting. Waiting for you to bring forth your vision.