First Steps of a Journey Towards Fulfillment
As I was preparing to launch this blog, I aimed to have a month's worth of pieces ready to post. I figured this would make the launch less stressful when I'm not already struggling with what to write next week. It turns out this is harder than I thought it would be, and you already know that I respond better to impending deadlines based on what I shared in my April Fools’ Day post.
What happened is that I have about a month's worth of half-done posts mixed with a few vague ideas, which is still better than nothing. That being said, a lot of the writing I have done recently is about overcoming the obstacles we face while working to achieve our dreams.
I am struggling with that right now, and I realized I was skipping ahead.
As much as I want this blog to be a real-time account of my struggles and victories in chasing my dream, I also genuinely want to help you realize yours. That means we all have to know what our dream is first. So, to start with, we will spend some time finding our dreams. I want us to start digging into the meaning and power of dreams in our lives and figure out what we actually want. Even if you already know what you want, I think it is essential to follow this process. I always feel more motivated when I am reminded of the importance of dreams in my life, and because the circumstances of our lives are constantly changing, our dreams are ever-changing.
So, let's start with defining a dream, or at least the definition that I operate on. Defining a dream is like defining success, in the sense that every person's definition will look different. I am big on Disney's definition that "a dream is a wish your heart makes." Another way to look at this is that a dream, when defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is a “cherished aspiration, ambition or ideal.” It's that simple. I classify anything as a dream that is simply something you desire that would make your life feel fuller and more joyful.
Defining dreams this way means that they are both big and small. They come in all shapes and sizes, whether the dream is tickets to your favorite artist or climbing Mount Everest. They can be as simple as drinking your morning coffee while watching the sunrise over the beach or as big as buying a house right on the beach. This definition of a dream means that we can have lots of them.
Jim Collins talks about having a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) in his book Good to Great. He describes it as "a huge and daunting goal…[that] is clear, compelling, and people 'get it.'" Napoleon Hill talks about a similar concept in Think and Grow Rich when he writes, "What a different story people would have to tell if only they would adopt a definite purpose, and stand by that purpose until it had time to become an all-consuming obsession." I believe those massive, life-changing, earth-shaking dreams are incredible and this dream is mine. But I don't think achieving this one big dream will fulfill me completely.
There will always be another dream to chase after it, and honestly, I don't want to wait the decades it will take to achieve this dream to find the joy I am looking for. There is plenty to be said about finding joy in the journey, and I'm sure we'll talk about that another time, but I am not a patient person, and I want to achieve my dreams now. Along the way, there will be plenty of opportunities to realize different, smaller, or random dreams. I believe there are so many other dreams in our lives that deserve to be brought to fruition. Identifying as many as possible makes us less likely to miss out on achieving something when the opportunity presents itself.
I'm not waiting for my life to start and for my dreams to come true because my biggest goal will take a long time to achieve. I get to achieve my dreams as often as I like. I get to pursue different things while trying to stay focused on my biggest dreams. When we have so many dreams, the wins are easier to count and our energy is easier to maintain when we face the giant obstacles that come from our huge dreams. The wins from defeating the little obstacles attached to our little dreams give us the confidence and record of victory we need to keep marching on.
I’ve already had so many dreams come true, and I keep my heart open to discovering new dreams. There is always something more that I want to pursue, not because I am unsatisfied but because I can always find a way to increase the joy in my life. I wanted to get that clear right off the bat. When we talk about dreams, it can be ANYTHING. A dream is simply something that will increase happiness in your life. I like what John Maxwell says in his book, Put Your Dream to the Test, "A dream should never be evaluated according to its size. That's not what determines its worth. A dream doesn't have to be big. It just has to be bigger than you are."
If you're lucky, you are already sitting on a list of dreams you want to achieve. But for a lot of us, our dreams have been tucked away. The busyness and monotony of our lives have beaten us down. Suppose you're like me, and mediocrity is always knocking at your door, inviting us to slip away into a quiet life of TV watching, Instagram scrolling and merely surviving. That knock is very good at overpowering the soft cries of our hearts for something more. I fight that every day, but that is a topic for another time, because today, we simply want to listen to our hearts and discover our dreams.
The first step to finding your dreams is to look. And the most significant thing to remember during this time is that we aren't analyzing and aren't solving anything right now. The plans to achieve our dreams will come on another day. Today we are just listening. I think when we take the time to listen, we will discover the dreams that have been quietly sitting with us for a long time. The longer a dream has been with us, the bigger it gets.
On Friday, I will share some of my favorite dream-finding exercises to help us discover more and more of what we really want. That being said, between now and then, just sit with these questions. What do I really want? What would make me happier in the big and small moments? What would change my life?
