How to Reach For Your Dreams

We all have a dream, that one thing that sits in the back of our mind and comes out to play when we are daydreaming. It may be a pool in the backyard with a diving board or it could be a cabin our in the woods that you retreat to when you are wanting to go enjoy a forest bath or need some solitude for your to focus on your next big project.

Whatever it is you have that desire to have or achieve or complete something in your life. Often that feeling is thought to complete us or help us in some wonderful way. Perhaps, your dream may just be a small step to a great accomplishment. However, you probably have a dream you are wanting to complete.

Why Even Have a dream?

There are those people who don’t want a dream. Why put that much work into something they are not going to be able to complete? The thought of getting one’s hopes up only to have them be destroyed because you can achieve them is wrong and mean spirited. Oddly enough there are those types of people running around the world thinking those very thoughts. IF you are like me you find that fascinatingly sad. Why would somebody not take the time to hope? Why avoid the challenge of reaching the summit? The dream is always attainable. It may not be reachable at first, and that is because you have to complete level 1-1 before you have the skill to beat the big boss at the end of the game.

You have to start somewhere. Yet you will never make it unless you start the journey. What is that old saying?

The Journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step

Really Old Dude

So you have to take the first step in making a dream. Imagine the wondrous and ask the exhilarating question of “What if?” Without that, you will just sit there, molder and eventually become mundane. Now if there is anything horrible about life it is the thought that you become mundane and mediocre. That is the biggest tragedy in life when someone who doesn’t even try and wants others to be in that same pit of misery.

So why have a dream? The answer is easy so that you can feel and know that you are alive, to experience the joys of success the pains of failure. Brush your life with all the colors of the journey as you become better and stronger so when it is time to tackle the big boss in your life you can and you get that goal.

How to Chase your Dream

Alright alright, so how do you chase your dream? You have tried the SMART goal method you have tried the SMARTER goal method. You have tried several means of reaching your goals. And you have failed each time. So If I am so darn smart, how does one actually chase their dream? That is what I want to tell you but I will fess up right now that it isn’t easy. You will have to work at it. You will need to carve out some time in your life to work on your dream.

Visualize your dream

You need to make your dream real in your own mind. To do this you have to start thinking of what it is like to reach your dream. How does it look? What does it feel like? Is there a smell? What will this dream do for you? Examine the results of you completing this dream from every angle. Think of the color. What it will do for you and your family. Build that image in your mind. Get it as complete and whole as you can. Can you now feel it? Describe how you would feel about it

Once you have that image in your mind’s eye, then you want to start thinking as if you already have accomplished it. Your primitive mind starts to get used to the idea. Why does it need to get used to the idea of already having that goal? Well, that is because your primitive mind thinks that anything new is dangerous and could potentially harm you in some way. So, It thinks that it is better that you stay in your cave and watch Netflix than take a chance of some irrational impending doom.

Acting like you already accomplished your goal also give you the opportunity to discover and overcome the different limiting beliefs that will be along the way trying to trip you up. If you are aware of the upper limit challenges then you can start working on them so that you don’t sabotage your success when you do there.  

Let Your Imagination run free

At first, it is literally a dream, yet so many of us don’t want to go overboard on our plans. We don’t want to be seen as greedy or any other limiting beliefs about something that will happen down the road. My response to that is GO WILD! Why limit your financial goals to only $80,000? Add a zero to that. You can do it. You may not know how at first but you didn’t know how to walk when you started yet look at you ambling about in a fully upright position. The only limit you have is what you tell yourself. Now can you make $800,000 in one year? Yes is it possible? Probably not, and that is because there are skills that you have to learn to be able to make that type of cash. So you will have to make small steps to build to that dream but that dream is possible.

Many folks make a big hair audacious goal and take a swing at it and they miss. So they give up, that my friends, is a failure in its purest form. You will have to try many different things to get to your dream. You will try and you will fail. Only for you to try something a bit different and only to fail in a different way but you did make a few more dollars.

Your imagination is the key to you discovering what you really want out of life. You can limit your dreams or you can let them go free. Then you can see how well you blew your own mind when those crazy dreams come true.

Plan your steps

Now you can’t just trek off into the world if you so choose. But that rarely ever works. If you have a goal then it is better to lay out a battle plan and layout the needed steps for success. Often a goal has several sub-goals you have to accomplish before you can complete your main goal. You can’t go to Spain unless you have your passport and other needed papers. So you have to figure out what the papers and documents needed to go to Spain. Then how long are you going to be in Spain? Are you just site seeing or are you walking the Camino De Santiago?

You have to have your plans to set up your steps and then go forth and make each a small goal. Then before you know it you are eating the best paella around.

Learning along the way

You are not going to know how to do everything as you make progress towards your goal and that is alright. Take that time and look at it as learning time. You can and will figure it out. It will take time to learn with the knowledge that you are completing your goal.

Use the TODO download

To make the needed steps and to accomplish those steps you may look at doing a to-do download. This is different than a to-do list. Because to-do lists really don’t do much for you. They give you small dopamine bumps when you cross one item off the list but that is all that happens. You rarely make huge progress with a to-do list.

My mentor Brooke Castillo has the tool the To-do download and it is amazing on how it works.

In a nutshell, this is how To-Do Download works

1. Grab a piece of paper and a pen. Then ask yourself this question, “What do I need to do?”
2. Then start writing down everything that needs to be done
3. When you think you have run out of things needing to be done ask yourself what else. Keep going till you have exhausted
4. Then ask yourself what obstacles am I going to face?
5. Write down all the different obstacles you could possibly run into.
6. When you have exhausted those possibilities then again ask, “What else?” Keep asking till you don’t have any more responses.
7. Now since you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do go through that list and mark out anything you don’t want to do. These may be things that have to be done so you can delegate them to somebody else.
8. Now it is time to priorities that list by most important first. Don’t make the list by most urgent list it out by most important
9. Now it is time to put the list to work. Transfer that list to your calendar. Yeah, schedule when each of that to-do is going to get done. It will be a bit of trial and error the first few times you do this but eventually, you will know that your blog post is going to take you 3 hours to write. The research for your podcast is going to be 1 and a half hours.  If you don’t complete that task at that time you stop till your day is finished and it becomes homework. No TV or video games till that task has been kicked in the teeth and sent down the road.

So with this tool added to your arsenal, you will be far more willing to do what you aim to do than if it was just a list of things that need to be done.

Can You Fail?

Now get ready to fail, because you are going to do it a lot. A baby learning to walk landed on his backside more times than not when learning to walk. They learn to feed themselves. Baby take failing as a part of life and you want to learn from the babies and accept that you will not make it the first try. More than likely you won’t make it your 10^th try either. But even as you land on your face you are making forward movement. So keep trying you are making progress every time you try. You get better equipped for success each time you try.

Follow these action steps

I do want to rehash the steps needed for your goals. So that you know what is needed from you to reach your goal. Take these steps and you will be further on your way to making your goals than anybody else who only have way tries.

Understand and believe that you can reach this goal.

Tell yourself how you will reach the goal and talk about your goal in the present tense.

Use the To-do Download. Don’t make excuses as to why you can’t. That is a lie you are telling yourself, so drop the excuses.

Finally, if you want to supercharge your opportunities then get a coach. I offer a coaching service but if you don’t want me then find someone who will coach you. They can help you get over the different hang-ups you will encounter along the way. Coaching is the key to every successful goal that is completed.