Vision. What you see, you create.

Ten years ago I had a vision of what I wanted my future, my now, to look like. And for the most part it does. There are parts that I wish were different, but the things that I was specific about in that vision happened more or less the way I wanted and expected them to.

When I was young it was pretty much just my mom and me against the world. We were dirt poor but I was happy.  But then she met my step-dad and it turned out to be me against the world. He made me pretty unhappy. And even when she did disagree with him, which was often, she submitted to his will in how to treat and raise me.

I decided around the ripe young age of six that I didn't have a family and wasn't going to until I could choose for myself who they were going to be. Fast forward through my teenage years full of frustration and angst. By the time I was in my mid-twenties I had gone through a lot of self empowerment and transformational stuff.

There was this one group of people that I regularly played Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games with. Most of them were amenable to my overall philosophy of empowerment and the pursuit to bring positive change to the world. We got along really well and spent a lot of time together. They were all good people. I got this idea in my head that these people should be family and that we should live together, pooling our resources and our debts, over time allowing the former to grow and eliminating the latter.

At the time we all lived in separate apartments. It appalled me the amount of money that was being thrown away every month. None of us owned our own residence and at the rate we were going none of us ever would. We were all separately struggling to survive.

My vision was for the core group, which at the time was four of us, to move into a house together, vastly cutting down on our monthly payments so we could get out of debt and actually own something, while at the same time bringing our message of personal growth and self improvement to the world.

For awhile I was fired up and really motivated and it showed in our results. It took a little over a year. But we did find a house big enough for us to move into. The problems came in that it was not just the four of us. Initially when we moved into the house there were not four but six of us. Things kept fluctuating until at one point there were twelve of us living in the house.

Our other friends had heard about our idea and thought it sounded great. They saw the good in what we were doing and jumped on the bandwagon. They wanted the pay off but they did not want to do the work of bringing the vision fully into reality. For awhile, it became pretty uncomfortable around here. Somehow it was harder to pay our bills with ten or more people working and living here than it was with four. The housing market falling apart did not help at all. The "new" people would not work together here and things were more or less chaos. I almost gave up.

Gradually, people started leaving. And with each person that left it actually got easier and easier to run our household.  Our debts are decreasing. Our secondary mortgage has been paid off.  There is a good chance that in the next year or so we will own our home free and clear. There are six people living in the house now, four core group members and two roommates. Or as I like to say it, four family members and two roommates. As a family we love and support one another. We do our best to make life better and easier for each other.

Over the last ten years a lot of mistakes have been made and a lot has been learned. I have a new vision now that includes the things that I have currently that are not exactly the way I want them and things that I do not have but do want. And this time I have a one year, five year and ten year vision. The shorter goals can be used to more directly focus on ensuring the larger picture turns out the way I want it to.

What does your now look like? Do your results match your vision from ten years ago? What is your vision for the future?