Have you ever noticed how brides always seem to be able to lose weight before their weddings? I think this is because they have a vision of themselves floating down the aisle in a cloud of white that is so real and so powerful that no slice of lemon meringue pie or plate of fettuccine Alfredo can hold a candle to it. At least not before the wedding. What happens afterward is another story, not so much because their discipline disappears but because the “floating white cloud” vision fades.

It takes a vision to give us the resolve and the determination we need to make positive changes in our lives. Nothing really big, bold, or beautiful was ever created in a country, in a company, in a family, or in a life without a clear picture of what it would look like, of how it would be.

Walt Disney was well aware of this when he created the Magic Kingdom, in Florida. It’s said that he told the executives planning the theme park to “build the castle first.” The castle was where the magic would be, and Disney seemed to think that if the designers, the engineers, and the workers had the castle to look at for inspiration, they could do all the hard stuff it would take to bring the Magic Kingdom to life.

Here’s what Disney proved: If you can feel the magic, you can go the distance. But in this process-driven world of ours, we don’t talk much about having a vision, do we? And that’s too bad, because I think that’s often the missing link between the life we’re living and the life we thought we’d be living; between how we feel and how we’d like to feel; between how we look and how we wish we looked.

We live in an age where information is king, where we are bombarded from every conceivable electronic device with every bit of knowledge that can be gathered by humans or machines. But I wonder if that actually gets us where we want to go. I mean, just look at all those diet and fitness books out there. Millions of people read them. But do you see millions of leaner, fitter people out there? I don’t. And I think the reason is that, in the end — whether you’re trying to quit smoking, start saving money, create a whole new career, or leave a debilitating relationship — it’s not about having the right information. It’s about having the motivation. And motivation comes from asking yourself this: “How good could I make it?”