“Give credit to your dreams, make them count, do everything necessary to work towards them. But please, don’t even for a second confuse your vision with reality. Instead, get ready to master your senses, sharpen your mind, and absorb the whole variety of existence. If you have the courage to believe in the good, but also master to acknowledge the bad, your hope will set the world on fire.” – Robin Grey
Every social entrepreneur is probably familiar with the frustrations the status quo brings along. You have all those ambitious ideas and plans how to create a world where everyone and everything is treated fairly, but the currently reality simply doesn’t look like that. Instead of getting discouraged by the gap between vision and reality, we learnt how to draw energy from this tension and see it as our greatest gift for change. In this article, we would like to share our insights on the art of visionary realism.
Your ideals are your biggest strengths
Humans don’t act according to their ideals. Human societal systems and behaviours are a reflection of the full spectre of negative and positive human characteristics. But this doesn’t mean humans can’t strive for an ideal.
If you are a social business your strength lies in the ability to believe enough in human ideals to actively work towards them.
You believe so much in it that you actively channel your energies and design services or a product that attempt to nurtures these human “good” characteristics instead of its less “ideal” counterparts. And however hard the day in and outs of striving for your ideals might be within the context of the existing full spectre of good and bad, it is this gap between your ideals and the current reality that makes you incredibly relevant.
In case your beliefs in a more equal, just and inclusive world are valid, you won’t suffer from competition as any other business does. You stay relevant until the world looks closer to this ideal version of equality and inclusivity. Whatever you plan to do, as long as you have this vision in mind, you stay flexible and adaptive to any circumstance.
Explore your possibilities
Although many humans don’t act according to their ideals, there are plenty who try very hard. Whatever it is that you are undertaking, if you look well enough, you will find someone or something that comes quite close to what you stand for. If you want to work with environmentally friendly products, look for someone who is doing the same. Read, research, and reach out to people that share your vision. If you know what you are looking for, you are likely to find a pool of accessible resources that you can dive into.
Accept your limits. Choose your current best.
Your work happens at the edge of what we know today and envision for tomorrow. Because you want to challenge the current way of doing things, you frequently will encounter the limits of current best practices. Whilst humans know quite a lot, there is a hell lot that we simply don’t know. Challenging the status quo and asking questions will lead you to many new answers, but also reveal many more questions. Don’t get frustrated by this.
Pick the solution that comes closest to your ideals and let go of everything that you can’t control at the moment. Invest your resources into what you can control. Your solution won’t be your ideal, but it will be your current best.
Be humble and acknowledge small achievements
Striving for ideals can be extremely energy daunting at times. Because they are what their names incline, an ideal version of how something could look like in a utopic world, you most likely will never achieve this stage. But you will come closer to it. Be kind to yourself and enjoy the process of learning. If something doesn’t work this doesn’t mean that you wasted your energy, but you learnt how to do it differently for the next time. There are no mistakes, but only lessons learnt. Be humble and celebrate small achievements. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it starts like that.
Your ideals are your biggest strengths
Humans don’t act according to their ideals. Human societal systems and behaviours are a reflection of the full spectre of negative and positive human characteristics. But this doesn’t mean humans can’t strive for an ideal.
If you are a social business your strength lies in the ability to believe enough in human ideals to actively work towards them.
You believe so much in it that you actively channel your energies and design services or a product that attempt to nurtures these human “good” characteristics instead of its less “ideal” counterparts. And however hard the day in and outs of striving for your ideals might be within the context of the existing full spectre of good and bad, it is this gap between your ideals and the current reality that makes you incredibly relevant.
In case your beliefs in a more equal, just and inclusive world are valid, you won’t suffer from competition as any other business does. You stay relevant until the world looks closer to this ideal version of equality and inclusivity. Whatever you plan to do, as long as you have this vision in mind, you stay flexible and adaptive to any circumstance.
Explore your possibilities
Although many humans don’t act according to their ideals, there are plenty who try very hard. Whatever it is that you are undertaking, if you look well enough, you will find someone or something that comes quite close to what you stand for. If you want to work with environmentally friendly products, look for someone who is doing the same. Read, research, and reach out to people that share your vision. If you know what you are looking for, you are likely to find a pool of accessible resources that you can dive into.
Accept your limits. Choose your current best.
Your work happens at the edge of what we know today and envision for tomorrow. Because you want to challenge the current way of doing things, you frequently will encounter the limits of current best practices. Whilst humans know quite a lot, there is a hell lot that we simply don’t know. Challenging the status quo and asking questions will lead you to many new answers, but also reveal many more questions. Don’t get frustrated by this.
Pick the solution that comes closest to your ideals and let go of everything that you can’t control at the moment. Invest your resources into what you can control. Your solution won’t be your ideal, but it will be your current best.
Be humble and acknowledge small achievements
Striving for ideals can be extremely energy daunting at times. Because they are what their names incline, an ideal version of how something could look like in a utopic world, you most likely will never achieve this stage. But you will come closer to it. Be kind to yourself and enjoy the process of learning. If something doesn’t work this doesn’t mean that you wasted your energy, but you learnt how to do it differently for the next time. There are no mistakes, but only lessons learnt. Be humble and celebrate small achievements. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it starts like that.