Friday, July 22, 2011

Wanna Make Your Dreams Come True?

Lots of people talk about their dreams.  Usually, it's how their dreams aren't coming true and they won't.  They're sucked into this never ending circle of dreaming and being disappointed. 

How does it happen like that and how do you change the cycle to be dreams and success?

A dream without action is nothing.  It's just a fantasy.  Even if you're praying, unless you're going to get a straight up miracle from God, a dream without action is simply time wasted.

What I have found is that people get into cycles of dreams and disillusion.  They dream a great big dream and hope and pray and nothing happens.  Then they get discouraged.  Then they dream again and the cycle repeats.  Often the dreams get bigger and the disappointments get greater.  It starts to taint their world, color what they see.  And suddenly all their life is a big fat unhappy moment.  Everything is about how they are loosing and not getting the prizes and rewards or even what they've tricked themselves into believing they deserve.

Thinking about deserving something is a scary place to be.  It's a place to be very cautious.  It can slide into entitlement.  And for me, I'd say, we really don't deserve anything.  We're not really entitled to anything.  We can sure want things, desire them and so on, but deserve, well, I think maybe only God can handle that one and I am not going to be the human that tells God He's doing it wrong or not giving me what I deserve or what I think I need or what I feel I'm entitled too.  No way.  I'm not going there.  Because I know what I deserve from God and I know instead I receive grace, mercy, forgiveness and love. 

Now, I wasn't saying something like you shouldn't get paid for working, not at all.  That's not what I was getting at. 

So what about those people that seem to have the golden ride?  You know the people, the ones who seem to always have their dreams come true. 

I'm going to tell you that they see the world through different eyes.  They are hopeful.  These are people who are optimistic.  Optimistic and practical. 

It's simple what they do.  Really.  We can all have their success if we want it.

They take those dreams and make them goals.  They just move the category or change the label if you will.  They look at the dream and see it for what it is, a final outcome of something.  Then, they break it down into it's steps and accomplish it one step at a time.  They realize and recognize that reaching these dreams/goals is going to take some real hard work on their part and time committed to the task.  They pray in addition to all this hard work. 

Am I good at this?  Nope.  Not at all.  But, I do finally understand it and just having that understanding has brought me some peace.

It helps me to not get caught in feelings and be able to see things for what they are.  Almost every dream can be pushed into a goal and worked towards. 

I'd even argue that something that is a dream of yours that you can't make into a goal with a plan of action is something that really shouldn't be a dream for you.  It's more like a wish. 

I've had just enough of the dreams pushed into the goal category and reach relative success in their completion or accomplishment to make me believe this is a part of how life goes. 

I'm sure to many of you this just isn't news, but to some of you, maybe it's an ah ha moment. 

Pick a dream of yours.  Break it down into it's steps and start working.  Work hard, without giving up, without giving in to all the cheap excuses that we all come up with when the job is hard and thankless.  Work hard and then when you reach your goal, be sure to look around at all those people you believed had the golden lucky streak in their lives.  The ones that live a charmed life where everything goes their way and it seems simple and easy.  I bet if you look at them real hard, real honestly, you'll find some people who really work hard to get to where they are and what they've accomplished.