Vision & Ideas

Outside the Casino in Estoril, Portugal, passersby paused to admire it. The sculpture’s message resonates deeply in all the colour language of the soul. I receive associations from something that exists outside of myself. I paused and asked: What does this sculpture remind me of? Why does it move me so profoundly? What associations does it awaken within me?

Each of us will have our own answers, but for me, three core values emerged: Openness — Security — Love. Inspired, I captured its essence in a photograph and created a collage to share with my readers, asking: “Would you like to explore your own core values?”

That means: object visualisation awakens a familiar reality by first observing, then entering what we see in our imagination. Later, we bring the experience alive here and now by reflecting on the deeper purple values and truths it reveals. Let us try to visit and read our inner landscape.

Here is one example

Meditation guide

Close your eyes. Allow the streets and the sculpture to appear before your inner vision. See it from a distance. Notice the colours, the season, the light. Move closer to what you see. Observe the details carefully. The park, roads, houses, animals, people. Step close to the sculpture. Feel the atmosphere around you. Experience everything as if you were truly there. Notice your emotions. Say goodbye to the sculpture. Then slowly return to the present moment.

My experience

I see my family. I see my four children. I see the mother of my children. In the foreground, I glimpse the scattered images of my homes, from the Arctic to the Equator. Closest of all, between myself and my memories, I see church spires and silent graveyards. I am still on the journey. The broken sculpture is myself and the values to which I belong. When life and landscape collide — I suffer. When my life becomes my landscape, I find strength again! The day belongs to me. Carpe Diem.

Intro film coming

The place for this secret’s intro film is reserved here. It fills in when the recording arrives.

The prophecy

An old proverb says: “You become what you believe.” If you have a mental picture in your mind of yourself as a grey and useless person, the chances are high that you will actually become one. If you have a picture in your mind of yourself as a healthy, active, and successful friend and colleague, your body and brain will steer in that direction and think and behave as a winner, rather than as a sufferer. The power and ability of thought to create visions therefore plays a decisive role in how we experience the self-fulfilling prophecy.

In another old saying from the Bible, the point is made even more clearly. It is stated there that: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23,7) For truly, the leadership philosophy basically starts with an inner and deeper understanding of what man really wants. By visualising one’s wishes more clearly, one can experience a clearer path toward the desired goal.

From newer research we know that our two brain hemispheres have different language and functional roles. While logical analytical thinking activates the left hemisphere, the activation of emotions and creative images primarily takes place in the right hemisphere. Since visual and archetypal thinking is, among other things, connected to the brain’s limbic system, symbols can therefore become powerful tools for understanding, like “frozen” images of a tree, a flower, a mountain, and so on, or as mental images of memories to which we associate experiences, feelings and fantasies.

If our tasks require unknown and hidden creativity, then in practical management this means that we must use a different approach than the one that activates our left and analytical brain hemispheres. In this process, it is therefore important to include both an analysis and an emotional experience in order to achieve the best possible solutions on a new and unknown level.

Which kind of creativity does the challenge in front of you call for right now? Pick one.

Next lesson

Lesson 13,2 · GroupCoaching

Group Coaching is SGL’s core product — read why, and how you can try your mind at being a group leader.