There’s a story about a famous person who made in a highly competitive sport. Someone asked her, “How did you make it?” and she replied “It was something I always dreamed about!” The someone said “Well I dreamed of being a rock star and it never happened!” The famous person said “Well, when did you stop dreaming?”
Dreams are not just wishful thinking but can be extraordinary motivation triggers, if we can harness them. They are not just the wild images and fantasies that come into our heads during sleeping.
A dream is a pumped up goal.
Here’s an example – an 8 year old says “I’d really love to be a professional footballer”. He plays football a lot with friends and keeps thinking about it. He grows up and takes a job in a sports centre.
Another 8 year old says the same thing. He plays every day and at weekends. He goes for coaching. He dreams of being a footballer each night before he falls asleep. He gets picked for a local club’s School of Excellence. When his mates start smoking, he decides to go running every night. He makes it eventually.
If you have a dream, everything else revolves around it ’til it is achieved. Most people give up because the effort and concentration is too much for them. But if you want to go for your dream life, you have to go for it as if your life depended on it, because it does!
Dream your Dreams
Try this technique and practise it every day for two weeks to imprint it on your subconscious:
- Think of something you really want for yourself or something you want to happen
- Get a picture of some kind in your mind of what it would be like if you achieved this dream – how you would be.
- See anything you can see about it – colours, shapes, people in your dream
- Hear yourself and anyone/anything else, which would be part of the dream
- Imagine the feeling you would have from achieving your dream
- Freeze frame everything – what you see, hear and feel
- Allow yourself to come back to the present. You now have a strong focus to work with but keep practising this ‘rehearsal’ technique – it will pay off.
Being motivated to go for your dreams takes energy and action, but most people give up before they begin because they think their probability of success is zero. They bail out before the boat even gets a hole.