I am watching the Australian version of so you think you can dance and a thought occurred to me.  A lot of people settle for dreams that people feed them.  I think you should not settle for what other people want from you.  Look inside your own heart and follow that.  Don’t settle for somebody else’s missed opportunity.  So many people live a life where they think they are doing things to please other people.  This is not a healthy way to live. Build your own dreams… don’t settle for those which come from others.

My job is not my life and at times I can say without a shadow of a doubt… I would quit if I had the opportunity.  The fact of the matter is that work is getting in the way of my dreams.  The daily adminstrative automaton-like work I spew out stops me from spending quality time working on building a more fulfilling life.   I am sure you are in the same boat.   So what are we to do about it?

Phase 1 – make a heart choice to follow your dreams…

The first thing you can do is make a choice that whatever you think you should be doing that you decide to do it. Ultimately you can choose what’s sensible, necessary and obvious for the time being. But at the very least you can make a heart commitment that you are going to follow what you dream about. What’s the harm? Just open it up and say I will do it! It won’t cost you a cent.  Don’t go quitting jobs or firing people… just say you will do it.

Phase 2 – Spend quality time inside your imagination building it on a daily basis

I read in Embraced by the light, a woman’s perception of the afterlife; that life is fully lived in the imagination. What we can imagine doing… we end up doing. Our imagination was given to us as a building tool.  It’s not just for sexy daydreams!  It’s a great way to open up your mind to things you didn’t think were possible.  Imagine yourself living your dream.  Why?  Simply, because… what you imagine today… you do tomorrow. 

Phase 3 – Look for opportunities and spend dedicated time learning about what you need to do in order to reach your dream

There is always a ‘doing’ cycle in reaching a goal. That doing is not paramount, in fact it’s the least important. You act and build your life from a creative vision you have growing on the inside. Purpose, is built from the inside out.

This works for me: When I am looking to build something and I have inner confirmation that I should be doing it I say (speaking is acting… if you say it with meaning and purpose), “I am expecting you God to help me reach this goal today because I perceive you want me to do it, so I thank you in advance for opportunities to take positive steps towards the end result. I expect good things to happen to me today.” You will be surprised at what you can do as a result of simply saying things like this. Yes, it’s the whole carpark thing but for some reason it works for me. It may not for you so put down your rocks.  The point is find what does work by trying and stick to it like glue.

The other part of the ‘acting’ part is to begin to look into and inquire about the the thing you wish to do. Learn what you can… this is a small part but it’s where you can do the least. If you dream to buy a yacht why not learn about them? Don’t spend all day in the store OR get overwhelmed by the stupid price of these things. Why not save up and take sailing lessons? Or hire a book or two from the library on sailing. Maybe, you can ask around and score a free ride from somebody? Who knows what can happen? To be honest… when the timing is right I have always noticed (often in hindsight) things that I was doing were required to help me in achieving the goal.

So where to from here?

What are you going to do? Are you going to build into your life the possibility of making a difference or are you going to sit back and be an armchair critic? I can assure you of this simple fact: unless you begin to think things can change today, tomorrow will still present you with the same old BS it did yesterday. This is a matter of choice. Are you going to build your dreams by at the very least looking into it or will be like the rest of the ants in this world and simply follow orders. The choice is yours.

Imagine you have just reached your dream. What would that feel like? Think for a moment what is it you really dream about? Say it was to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. If that was your burning desire what on earth would stop you from doing it? Money? Time? What about if you had two legs amputated below the knee? Warren Macdonald suffered a horrible fate of losing both legs below the knee after being crushed by a rock on a trek in Hinchinbrook Island, Australia. Yet he managed to reach his goal and climb Mount Kilimanjaro. So what’s your impossible dream?

Dreams are meant to be impossible

The fact is when we were formed dreams were formed in us. I don’t care what your friends told you or what you think… you have some deep down burning desire in you that wants to form itself into an actual reality. As I have said before there are two kinds of reality that we need to be concerned with.  That which is active and that which is passive.  The passive kind are the dreams we have and the things we entertain in our heart.    These things are what I am talking about today.  What is it that you deeply dream about?   What are the things you have in your heart to do?  Write them down.

The main goal of having a dream

The major thing you need to do when you have a dream is to think about it.  Don’t shuffle it under the carpet and pretend like it’s not there.  Your dream is that thing that keeps you up at night, that niggle in the back of your mind.  It’s the thing you would do if you could do anything.  It’s meant to be impossible because it will take miracles, action and much faith to get the thing off the ground.  If it didn’t why would you dream about it?  If it was possible there would be no need to dream about it.  You would just do it.

So what can I do about my dream?

The thing I have maintained having reached a dream or two in my life (getting a post graduate degree and a PhD… almost there) I can say that there are several things you need to know.  The most important for this post is this: hold on to it.  Don’t let it go.   There are many things I want to achieve before I go home but that doesn’t mean I am a failure.  The only failures I have met are people who fail to try.  So what’s your dream?  The first and most important thing you need to do is work that out and hold on to it no matter what.   Never give up.

Do you have a big dream inside of you that just knaws away at you, day and night?  I know I do.  So what are we meant to do with the things we hope for?   This dream that is incubating away in you is actually a template for the future.  So how will you get there?  You do it by making the right choices and taking strategic steps one right after the other, day in and day out.   One of the biggest hindrances to reaching our goals is the problem of ‘big score’ mentality.  This way of seeing things puts the goal or the desire of your heart right in front of you.  What’s wrong with that?  Not very much but the reality is you build a big dream into reality with good thinking and by setting shorter targets to boost your achievement.  What do I mean?  Well, consider the great wall of China.  It was built over a period of time and courtesy of overview effect we see the finished product and marvel.  However, that ‘dream’ was built over a period of time.  It was built with human hands over a sustained period of time.   If you have a big score mentality you will also be looking for the next hit rather than realising the ‘big thing’ can be achieved with a progressive steady plan of growth.  Even if you require a big miracle… it’s still made up of smaller ones!  So here are some ideas for avoiding ‘big score’ mentality.

Make your goal specific

When you are thinking about your future and the goal you have think about precisely what it is you want.   What is the core desire or aim of what you plan to achieve.  For example, I want a PhD.  It’s a desire of my heart.  The first thing I did was finish a bachelor’s degree then enrol in a research masters degree, then I enrolled in a PhD once I had finished the masters.   I made my goal very specific.  If you can’t do this… don’t worry.  Live for a while.  Soon enough you will find something that you really want to do.

What are the steps required to reach the goal

Each step was towards my ultimate goal.  I am almost there … and yes it’s taken ten years to reach this point.  Is ten years a very long time to reach a goal?  During those long hours slaving over a PC yes it does seem like a long time.  But, it doesn’t matter once you have completed what you set out to do.  So long as you focus yourself on writing each day, even if it’s one page a day.  You will have 365 pages of quality material by the end. Each step is another step towards the goal.  Over this time I didn’t allow the goal be overshadowed by how much the actual work and my job drained my energy.   You simply can’t afford to allow your energy to be sapped away by the routine nature of making money.  Remember, one step closer is better than one step backwards.

See the big score as coming in stages

I think this is where most people become disheartened.  They lose confidence in themselves because of the bigness of the goal.  If you aren’t able to conceptualise the stages or phases required to build your goal then you will you find yourself becoming discouraged.  Set your self progress targets towards the goal on a month by month basis.  How much closer are you to realising it?  Measure it against the end result and see you will be pleasantly surprised.   To continue my previous point, see the steps as ‘phases in reaching the big score’.  A man I know has a dream of being a millionaire.  But for every dollar he makes he spends at least 50% on lottery, gambling or other means of big score dreams.  I am not joking when I say if he had of put at least half of his money away for an extended period of time he would be just about there by now.  The promise of an immediate payoff for no real effort in his mind is greater than the possibility he will make sustained money over a period of time.  This is what we call the gambler’s fallacy.   While my friend has deep seeded mental reasons for his gambling addiction and this in part explains his behaviour.  Most of us do not recognise just how successful we could be if we consistently saw our big goals as a set of steps or goals to be reached.  Instead, I think we see the desire and think well that’s what I will have at the expense of setting short term goals and reaching those targets over a period of time.

Don’t listen to morons

In short keep your goal a secret if you are worried about your progress.   Once, I had a dream to be in movies and I decided to tell everyone in the video store that that’s what I want to do.  After awhile of no achievement I became constantly discouraged by people around me saying, ‘Hey you where’s that movie?’ If you have a big dream keep it quiet or else the morons will get you down.

Don’t be afraid to try alternative paths

As you break down the dream into the steps required (or if you like the tactics you need to employ) think about how can do this.   Is your current plan giving you the realistic growth that you expected.  If it isn’t don’t be afraid to try different ideas along the way.  Whatever you do… don’t give up! I know many people that come and go with a desire to do this or that and once the reality of the stepped phases sets in they simply find it too difficult and walk away.  Most people I have met that have a dream are like this.  If you are stuck go talk to a friend, collegue or someone about it.  Another persons viewpoint may be just the thing you need to get there.

Remember that it is okay to dream your goals and plan to have.  It’s okay to visualise the possibility of you having it and seeing yourself with it.  But, there comes a time when you must work off a plan and begin to take small steps towards your desire.  There are times where you can’t see what to do.  In those times don’t give up… walk away for a while and come back.  After a period of time, some research or perhaps some discussions with people you know, the answer will become clear.  In short to avoid big score mentality we need to focus ourselves on understanding how we think and how we act.  If you desire the big hit that’s good BUT remember there will be little actions that go along side it.

Technorati Tags: dream, reality, goal

Do you have a dream?  I do.  I dream to be successful in all that I do.  One thing that kept me going through the hard times was a desire to see something happen in my life that was great.  I would say that at least on one occasion holding onto hope was very important.  Having working with a aid organisation for awhile now I can say of the hallmarks of extreme poverty is how people in the slums of the world lose hope.   The dreams they have escape them and the reality of the sounds, smell and feelings of their situation stop them from hoping for something better.   It’s sad to see older people who have given up hope that their dreams will ever come to pass.  Here are some reasons why you should never give up hope.

1. Hope is a goal setter

Hope sets the goal for some future event to come to pass.  Whether you realise it or not, you have the power to hope for something better.  When you focus on what’s happening in your life and hope sets in you will begin to dream.  We are all equipped with the mechanisms of hope, so there is no excuse.  Transcending reality is the hard part and I will talk about that in a later post.   You need some kind of goal to set for yourself so hope for something.  Ask yourself this question:  What do you like doing?  Are you doing it?  No?  Why not begin to hope you will?  Set a goal on the inside and begin hoping.  Without the goal how can you ever get anywhere?

2. Hope makes you feel good

Hope can be medicine for your soul.  Are you stuck in a terrible situation.  Begin to hope for things to change.  Recognise what it is that you want to change and begin dreaming about it.  Think about the underlying emotions that rise into your consciousness when you do.   What feelings do you feel?  Doesn’t it make you feel better.  The only problem is staying in that state.  You need to foster hope and make it grow.  You do this by remembering the hope day after day and entertaining it in your imagination.  I do this often and it has helped me tremendously in goals I have achieved and goals I haven’t.  I almost have a PhD which is the result of hoping for something first.  When I began this journey I wasn’t qualified and I should not have been let in.  But I hoped and believed and here I am today.  It all began when I had a dream in my heart of wanting to study more at university.   I will share this story in more detail later on.  There were times when I was studying over the past seven years that I felt I would never emerge out of it in one piece.  But, thank God, I never lost hope that I would emerge out of it with my dream in hand.  What do you dream about?  Begin hoping for it by seeing it in your minds eyes.  Hope for something better.

3. Hope is a template for faith

In the post that follows this one I will explain it in more detail.  Hope sets the goal and provides the template for you to believe.  The power of belief is something everybody has.  You use it to shape and guide your life on a daily basis.  Think of it this way: hope is the blueprint of your dreams whereas belief is the concrete.  What do you dream about?  I dream about a world where communities are transformed from poverty into prosperity.  I dream about things that spontaneously come to me during prayer, my children’s life and those that I teach.  This is not real it’s a dream.  Yet it provides the template for me to want something better in my life.  There is a saying I have heard in Christian circles, ‘hope deferred makes the heart grow sick’ (it comes from the proverbs).  When you lose hope you lose everything.  I have seen the reality of this in people’s life.  What you think about your life and the direction it’s taking is very much the substance of hope.  Everything you are doing is based on it.  If you are a practicing lawyer, doctor, accountant or IT person you once hoped you could do that.  That hope lived in you as a dream.  Now that you are doing it, you no longer hope for what you have.  Yet, if you didn’t hope in the first place you would have had to template to form a belief in you and you would have thrown it all away.

4. Hope builds optimism for the future

A very close friend of mind said it this way, ‘hope is faith in the future’.  I like that.  Hope is faith that at same point you will be experiencing a future dream.  Whatever it is that you want to do if you hope for it, see it and begin to expect it you will eventually have it.   You cannot reach your dreams if you don’t have one.  You cannot build a better life if you don’t think about what it is you want and hope like crazy.  Will you get it if you hope for it?  No, but you will begin to move towards it and without that you will never get your dreams.  Hope is the substance we use to lay down a blueprint for the future.  It’s the part of us that was born into us or discovered as we grew older and it’s the real us surfacing up from underneath letting us know that we are really there.    Today, why don’t you begin to hope and see what you find in your heart.

Remember what you see is not always what is real.  Hope forms a firm foundation for the future actions you wish to take.  If you don’t do it… then your life will resemble pretty much what it does at present.

Technorati Tags: dream?, successful, hope, realise, reality, goal, faith