Lessons In Being A Visionary

By Leo Gura - November 20, 2023

People do not appreciate the psychology — really, the Mind — that it takes to be a visionary leader. Your mind has to be structured differently than ordinary people. Vision is a very rare thing among humans. If you have vision, you’re in the top 1% of mankind and you have a unique responsibility toward fulfilling it. Most humans do not know how to have truly original thoughts. If you possess this ability it’s like you possess a golden goose that lays golden eggs. But, now you have to work your ass off to make something of it, because visions do not actualize themselves.

As a visionary, it took me a long time — 3 decades — to realize that very few humans are visionaries. Not knowing any better I just assumed everyone was like me. But it turned out that I have a very rare type of mind. But nobody told me that, I had to figure it out all on my own. If you happen to be a unicorn, a problem that can arise is that you don’t even realize you are a unicorn until late into the game. As a unicorn isn’t extra important that you don’t doubt yourself.

My mind is structured in such a way that I look for new ideas all the time. If it’s not new and original, I’m just interested in it. Innovation is one of my highest values, but it took me a lot of self-reflection to make that explicit to myself. No one even told me that innovation could be a high value. But it’s a core feature of the operating system of my mind. Which is why I am able to do groundbreaking intellectual work. But the downside of having such a mind is that you can’t be bothered to care about mundane, conventional things.

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