“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today” – James Dean
As kids we took our dreams and wishes extremely seriously. It was our default state. We constantly searched for ways to get what we wanted and didn’t like to hang around too long waiting for it.
While this search for instant gratification is certainly not always appropriate in adult life, taking our dreams and wishes seriously should remain important to us. So how do we do that?
In my own case I have found the following three steps incredibly useful in keeping me on track in supporting some of my own dreams. Although simple in theory putting these steps into place and making them habit has meant that my long term dreams of writing on things I am passionate about has started to come true. This has happened through both setting up this blog and also an ever expanding collection of self-published e-books over the past 18 months. I am on a mini roll and you can be to if you put these steps into practice.
1) Identify Them
This may seem obvious but first we have to identify and uncover what our real heart-felt dreams and wishes are.
It’s easy to be distracted by what other people around you may want or indeed what you think you should want. However, is this what you really want or are you just keeping up with others?
Only you can truly know what you are passionate about and what makes you tick and gets you excited. Spend time really peeling back what it is that makes you really come alive. Identify your dreams.
2) Make Them Important
Once you have identified your dreams, wishes and wants it’s time to make them a priority.
Deferred living (I’ll do this tomorrow) can creep in at this point or complete overwhelm as to the task ahead (i.e. how do I get from where I am to where I want to get to).
To avoid this, just try doing one small thing today that can help in supporting you toward your goals. Then, make this a daily habit. Just do something in support of your goal. It could be something small (a tweet to tell people about a new blog post) or it could be something large (a move to a new country).
Whatever approach you take start taking your dreams and aspirations seriously.
3) Make Them Happen
Dreams are great at often giving us either small clues or indeed big neon style pointers to what it is we truly desire. However, who says they just have to stay dreams?! We can also make them our reality.
Identifying and then making our dreams and wishes important leads us to then trying to make them happen. This life is yours to lead so whether you know it or not you are master of your own ship. You can sit passively and watch your life pass by you or you can take action and really try to make your actual life the one of your dreams. Which would you rather it would be?
Reclaim your ability to dream out loud.