197The best use of heroes is not to just be in awe of them,
but to learn something from them. To let their lives in-
spire us. They are only people like we are. What distin-
guishes them from us is the great levels they’ve reached
in self-motivation. To passively adore them is to insult
our own potential. Instead of looking up to our heroes,
it is much more beneficial to look into them.
95. Hold your vision accountable
“It’s not what a vision is,” says Robert Fritz “it’s what
a vision does.”
What does your vision do? Does it give you energy?
Does it make you smile? Does it get you up in the morn-
ing? When you’re tired, does it take you that extra mile?
A vision should be judged by these criteria, the criteria
of power and effectiveness. What does it do?
Robert Fritz is widely quoted in Peter Senge’s busi-
ness masterpiece, The Fifth Discipline. Fritz is a former
musician who has taken the basic principles of creativ-
ity in music composition and applied them to creating
successful professional lives. Life gets good, he argues,
when we get clear on what we want to create.
Most people spend most of their waking hours try-
ing to make problems go away. This lifelong crusade to
solve one’s problems is a negative and reactive exist-
ence. It sells us short and leaves us at the end of life (or
at the end of the day) with, at best, the double-negative
feeling of “fewer problems”!
“There is a profound difference between problem
solving and creating,” Fritz points out in The Path of
Least Resistance.
“Problem solving is taking action to have something
go away—the problem. Creating is taking action to have
something come into being—the creation. Most of us
Hold your vision accountable