Renovate Your BIG DREAMS!

January 23, 2012 in Business, Personal Development

“A Goal is a DREAM with a deadline.”  Napoleon Hill

We all tend to think about our goals at this time of year. It’s a new year and that means it’s time to set our goals. Yet setting goals isn’t the first step. Before we can set goals that will challenge us to step out of our comfort zones – we must first take time to dream. If we don’t first dream, we can’t really set goals that will stretch us and push us forward. Our dreams are the big picture. Our goals are simply the steps we need to take to reach our dreams.
Thinking about our BIG DREAMS requires we ask ourselves some tough questions and we get honest about our answers.
Some of the questions we can ask include the following:
  • What do I want to do with my life?
  • What would I do if money did not matter?
  • Why does my life matter?
  • What difference will I make in the world?
  • What are my strengths and how will I apply them?
  • What do I want to experience for myself and with others?
  • What do I want to contribute to?
  • Where will I live?
  • How will I support myself? How much money do I want to make?
  • How will I grow? What must I do to be content and satisfied with life?
Dreaming big can take many forms. It can mean you identify your core ‘area of brilliance’ and then get clear about how you will serve the world with your gifts. It could mean you have a big item like a boat you are reaching towards. Or it might mean you sell everything you own to go help those in need. Big dreams can be about money, they can be about service, they can be about relationships – they can be ANYTHING you want them to be. Your dreams are yours. Your life is yours. How will you live it? What can you do? What should you do?
During my vacation I was able to really think about my BIG DREAMS. I spent time writing, daydreaming, napping, reading, walking and just BEING. It was awesome, hard and challenging all at the same time.

What I learned about DREAMS in Mexico:

BIG Dreams are awesome! Having BIG DREAMS is awesome. It’s so much fun to think about what I want my life to look like, how much money I want to make and what I will do with all my success. It’s definitely a “feel good” exercise and yet if I’m not careful that’s all it will be.

Dreaming BIG is hard! It’s fun to dream BIG until we start thinking about what it will take to make those BIG dreams happen. When I look – really look at the big picture it’s scary. Being successful is NOT easy. Making money is NOT easy. Making a difference is NOT easy. Reaching BIG dreams of any kind is HARD work. Yet the work is worth it. If I can walk through the fear and work hard – I can achieve what I set out to. Or I will at the very least be farther along that where I was when I started. Most of the times going after BIG dreams is more about what we learn in the process than about achieving the end result.

I will be challenged if I DREAM BIG! If I dare to dream BIG – I will be challenged. I got very clear about what my big dreams are while I was away. And when I got home there were opportunities that came up that I wanted to say ‘yes’ too. They were good things – awesome opportunities. And yet they were things that would distract me from my BIG dreams. Unfortunately I said yes to these things and as soon as I did I KNEW that I should have said ‘no’. I tried to just go with the flow but within a few days my gut was screaming at me. I knew I had to say no to the other opportunities in order to truly say YES to my BIG DREAMS.

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