We are going to talk a lot, from now on, about the keys to making a great and workable plan. But remember, a plan can only take us so far. It does not matter how much information we have or how prepared we are because if we never take action, we will never get anywhere. We cannot wait until our plan is perfect to start taking action. This would be like planning a trip to Disney World but not leaving until you knew there would be no red lights along the way. Honestly, we wouldn’t make it to the grocery store with that strategy.

As we go through the process of beginning to achieve our dreams, I want to differentiate some terms. When we read books from the self-help industry, these terms are often used interchangeably. In many ways, they do mean something along the same line, but they actually represent different stages in the life cycle of a dream. I use dream as the overarching term simply because it is my favorite, but you could refer to it as the life cycle of anything on this list.

Now that we have our dreams and are armed with hope, we can begin to achieve. Today, I want to introduce my simple, foolproof plan to fulfill every one of your dreams. It doesn't matter if the dream is as big as becoming an astronaut who travels to Mars or if it is as simple as seeing a band perform when they come to town in a few months.

I have spent the last week in limbo, waiting for my world to come crashing down. My husband and I waited on a departure date for an impending deployment. We waited on news that never came. It was an emotionally exhausting week.

I hope you enjoyed the exercises from Wednesday and took some time to really think about your dreams. If you didn’t, though, now is your chance. I will keep today’s post short and sweet so you can use the 5-10 minutes you would normally spend reading my post to start your list of dreams. And once that time is up, if you’re on a roll, then don’t stop!

As promised, here are some exercises to find your dreams. Don't stop at just one dream. Remember, dreams come in all shapes and sizes, and while our plans will usually focus on one dream at a time, we will often discover that we can accomplish other dreams along the way simply because we already know what they are.

As I mentioned on Friday, delusion and luck are two sides of the same coin. Today, I want to tell two stories about luck. The biggest thing to remember with luck is that everyone can be lucky. I'm not talking about believing that you're lucky enough to win the lottery, but we have to believe that we are lucky enough to win the school raffle. We have to believe that the cards can be in our favor, and I am sure you have examples in your life of when the tides turned in just the right way.

We’ve talked about how when we enter the dreaming process, we need to operate with a sense of childlike imagination and suspended disbelief. I want to introduce two more concepts before we finally get to the activities to discover our dreams. Today we will talk about delusion, and on Monday, we’ll finish off with luck.

I left this as a question mark post because I don't actually know if this should be a characteristic of a dreamer. Seeing the future is essential, but that's not quite what I'm talking about here. It's something stronger than just seeing the future because I live in the future. For better or for worse, that's where I am most of the time. That doesn't mean I don't love and appreciate the present, but I am always thinking ahead.

I am undecided if this will be the last piece I write about the characteristics of a dreamer. There are so many attributes that we must have to dream and even more that we need to achieve our dreams. For most of us, though we already possess these characteristics, we just need to strengthen them in some areas. Everything that we talk about related to the skill of dreaming is learnable. Because it is a skill, we can grow and develop it. Where we are at today is not where we have to stay.

On Monday, we will talk about part two of the characteristics of dreamers. Today, I wanted to be vulnerable. That's a big reason why I am writing on this blog. As much as I want to help everyone reading to discover and achieve their dreams, I am writing for myself. Life as a military family is tough, and while I have learned to cope much better than I did three years ago, I still have bad days.

On Monday, I mentioned in the post, 4 Reasons Why Dreams Matter in Your Life, that self-esteem and confidence were essential ingredients to dreaming. I want to talk about those characteristics today and then a few more on Friday. To have the most success when we begin dreaming, it helps if we understand some of the aspects of a dreamer. When we can fit more easily into the mold of someone who dreams, it is much easier to discover the dreams we have within ourselves.

I know for many of us, dreaming may be new, and even if it isn’t new, the scale we will be talking about might be. One of the exercises I have in dreaming starts with making a list of 100 dreams. That’s a lot, and frankly, it’s a lot of work to come up with, but we’ll get to that later. For today, I want us to talk about what the point is. I know we covered this a bit with the story from The Dream Giver that I shared on Friday, but I want to go deeper and hammer out why we should care.

I had a different post planned for today, where I wrote about some activities and methods to help get the ball rolling on discovering our dreams. But I realized that I was skipping ahead again. I’m sure this will happen often, and hopefully, my website team doesn’t get too annoyed with me for switching out my posts. While it will be fun to work on discovering our dreams, I have to give a disclaimer before I help anybody find their dream. It would be negligent of me not to warn you that dreaming is DANGEROUS.

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..

My name is Sarah Hartley, and before I go any deeper into creating this blog, I feel it is important for you to know who I am and why I am here. I know this website has an about me page, but this is the beginning of my journey.

Today is an exciting and nerve-wracking day for me. After months of planning, my website is finally live and my writing will be out there for the world to see. There is no turning back; after all, the internet is forever. I am launching this site with a pit in my stomach, but I am not allowing the fear to get me again. Today, I persevered. You know this because you can read it right now.