What sets innovators and pioneers apart from mere dreamers is their courage and unwavering commitment to a cause without any need for immediate validation from their environment.
Angella Nazarian - Visionary Women
But what is required of us all to see our own visionary potential? According to Katharine Graham, the former publisher of the Washington Post, it is:
Taking risks and facing challenges head-on teaches us more about our abilities than any other life event.
My discussion this week with Angella Nazarian about her book Visionary Women, sheds light not only about the women in her book, that range from Maya Angelou to Marie Curie and from Amelia Earhart to Helen Keller, but gives us insights into our own visionary nature.
Understanding human nature and getting a glimpse of people's inner workings was a step toward better understanding myself... Stop imagining that person in the future as a stranger, and instead see that it's you.
The Helen Keller story is one that will always amaze anyone who comes across it. There is a quote in Angella's chapter about her that is not from her or Ann Sullivan, her amazing teacher and confident, but from another teacher Madison Taylor, which I believe sums up what a visionary is:
Sight is the ability to see the physical world, while vision is the gift of seeing beyond it.
There is no doubt that true visionaries are set apart by their uncanny abilities, passions, and commitments, but that does not mean that we cannot experience aspects of that within ourselves. As Angella states:
Passion is the fire inside that fuels us, it adds depth to our lives... There are universal topics that are at the heart of life: our desire to uncover the qualities at the root of our identity.