Hopefully, you had the chance to read my post on Monday about the ready, fire, aim technique. If you haven't, go ahead and check it out. If you want the TLDR version, though, here it is: We ready ourselves by collecting as much information as possible, but once we have reached about 75% prepared, we fire off our plan and correct our aim later. The point of this technique is to start taking action and avoid getting caught up in a cycle of trying to create the perfect plan. Here's the thing about the ready, fire, aim technique, though, it requires two things from us to actually work.

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.