Vision Circles

What is the philosophy of Vision Circles?

The philosophy of Vision Circles states that the personal, professional and social actions of human beings are motivated by the satisfaction of their basic needs and by the realization of their ideals.

The purposes of Vision Circles are:

• To learn strategies to identify and clarify your own ideals;
• To show you how to change ideals into action;
• To facilitate dialogue within yourself and with others to share concerns, ideals and practical concepts;
• To show you how to construct a personal creed by using internal and external dialogue.

The following guide is based on the common sense belief that ideals motivate us to become the best that we can be as a person, a parent, a spouse, a friend, a professional, and in any other aspect of our lives.

Who is the Vision Circles Program for?

The program presents a strategy for solving human problems, that is, discovering how to improve some aspect of our lives, finding out how to overcome contradictions and inconsistencies that accompany our emotional distress, and closing the gap between the way things are and our vision of the way that they could be. The program is for those interested in developing creative thinking to improve their personal and professional lives.

After learning the basic ideas and the steps of the program you can use Vision Circles to resolve a specific concern such as, parenting, overcoming stress, improving communication, building organizational morale, etc. Using the program with a group focused on the same concern (eg. parents on parenting, teachers on teaching, leaders on leading, ministers on ministering, counselors on counseling, managers on managing, etc.) is a productive and efficient way to discover how to connect ideals to effective, practical ideas.

The goals of the guide are:

1. To show you how to identify your ideals in the different aspects of your life;
2. To show you how to construct practical ways to realize your ideals.

What are the major ideas that form the foundation for the Vision Circles Program?

1. Humans think irrationally, rationally and more-than-rationally.
2. The human mind is intuitively in touch with ideals and searches for order based on those ideals.
3. Humans can construct a personal creed or philosophy of life, that is, a vision of life based on their ideals.
4. A personal creed is necessary to live at the higher levels of life and to experience the full joy of living.
5. Humans think simultaneously with a tender-minded, idealistic attitude and a tough-minded, practical attitude.
6. Human life is not solving a math problem that has a right answer. Human life is a personal project of realizing our spiritual ideals within the limitations and possibilities of our human situation.
7. Humans can reconstruct their thinking to create better practical ideas that effectively translate their vision of life into productive actions.
8. Humans do not fulfill their secular/religious/spiritual ideals by mechanically applying learned techniques and methods.
9. Genuine human actions require thoughtfulness that gives birth to understanding. Humans need to know what they are doing, why they are doing it and how to do it.
10. The transformation of 'what-is' into 'what-could-be' requires that each person develop personal insights regarding the meaning of his or her ideals.