What kind of town do you want to live in? 

Quick check: how much time do you spend thinking about the kind of town you’re moving towards, versus how much time you spend thinking about the past? 

It’s going to take a crowd of people to build the kind of town you want to live in. The catch is you can’t attract a crowd of builders when you spend all your time talking about the wrongs of the past. 

If you’re focused on telling everyone how Walmart killed downtown, you can’t focus on building new businesses downtown. 

If you’re focused on the history of local political abuses and infighting, you’re not focused on the future. 

If you’re telling me about the problems in your town, you’re not telling me about the kind of town you want to become. 

You don’t have to put your head in the sand and ignore the problems. I just want to know if you spend as much time thinking about the future as you do thinking about the past. 

What kind of town would you like to live in? Could you describe it to me? Right now, hit reply and tell me the positive vision for your town. Don’t include any of the problems, obstacles or things stopping you. Focus only on the positive future. 

It’s a challenge to stay positive, isn’t it?

Our natural tendency is to moderate our vision, to temper it with “reality.” But the secret is this: more than enough people are already focused on everything that’s wrong with your town. Government agencies from higher-up are quick to focus on your shortcomings to their regulations. Locals get together and spend hours talking about who messed up what. Political machinations over the past 20 years are popular topics of discussion.

None of that will inspire the people who are going to actually build your town’s future. Only a positive vision can do that. 

On June 8, Deb Brown and I are going to show you ways to use your positive vision to attract the crowd of people who are going to build your town with you. But if you don’t have a positive vision of what kind of town you want to build, you can’t attract anyone to help build it.

So that’s your assignment. Spend 1 minute right now thinking about the kind of town you want to live in. I want to see that vision with you.    
 
Keep shaping the future of your town, 
Becky