Dreams are absolutely necessary to explore and re-imagine our potential. As a person who wants to grow personally and professionally, I am confident that you have an ideal vision for your life at home and work. Even if you haven’t formalized your vision (and I highly suggest that you do so by writing a personal narrative or creating a vision board that you can revisit regularly), I encourage you to think deeply about your most fabulous version of your future self.
Envision yourself 3 years from now, after committing to take action to move yourself forward despite your fears about the unknown future ahead.
How do you spend your time? Who are you with and what types of activities do you regularly pursue? How do you move through the world? What do you do with consistency and ease?
There are specific behaviors that will all but guarantee that your dreams remain in your head as unrealized musings. If you make any one of these three mistakes, you are almost certainly at risk of dampening your dreams instead of nurturing them.
Mistake #1: Keep your dreams to yourself
While everyone and their mama need not know your business, it is important to have a few people (maybe even just one) that you can trust with your hopes for tomorrow. Accountability is a powerful thing. By giving voice to your dreams by sharing them with someone else you can create a supportive environment that encourages you to continually invest in yourself.
As you make progress you can celebrate your ‘wins’ with your confidant(s) and feel even more compelled to go for it. In the best case, you can mutually cheer each other on.
Mistake #2: Wait for your dreams to come true
Dreams require work. There is simply no way around it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Hope is not a strategy. You must take action if you want to transform your reality. Shape your mindset to reflect the best vision for your life and surround yourself with people who likewise exhibit your ‘can do, will do’ attitude.
The odds of hanging around and tripping over the world’s most incredible opportunities are slim. Take control of your destiny by doing every reasonable thing within your power.
Mistake #3: Allow your dreams to get stale
As with most things, dreams require regular upkeep and fine-tuning. Make sure that you aren’t in blind pursuit of an objective that no longer reflects who you want to be or where you want to go. Continually reassess and adjust your vision to ensure that it aligns with the life that you are creating for yourself.
In some cases, you may even find that you’ve outgrown a particular dream or it isn’t (gasp) big enough in terms of its scope or impact.
Yes, that can actually happen.
Keep your dreams alive in all their vivid glory: share them with the right peeps, take action to make your vision a reality and keep your goals fresh to make sure that they evolve as you do.
Engineer Your Bliss Challenge: Which one of these mistakes are you making and what will you do differently going forward? Let me know on Facebook.