Your dreams are counting on you!
Would you pursue your dreams for 10 years without seeing any significant progress?
Is that being crazy, stubborn or is it the hidden secret to making your dreams come true?
The wild thing about making dreams come true is that you never know when it is going to happen! You could be just around the corner (literally or figuratively) from making that life-long dream come true and you would never even know it.
In fact, I would bet that when your dream seems the farthest away is when you are about to break through the darkness and see that dream realized.
That is exactly what happened to us recently. Before I share my story, let me give you some examples of people you may have heard of…
Steven Spielberg dropped out of high school, re-entered and was placed in a learning-disabled class. Only after moving to a new town and getting into a better school did he graduate. Then he was denied entrance into the film school at University of Southern California, twice. In spite of these setbacks he went on to direct some of the biggest blockbusters of all time.
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series wrote the first book as a penniless single-mom raising her child and typing on an old manual typewriter. Twelve different publishers turned her down when she tried to publish her book. Twelve! What if she had given up on the 10th or 11th “no”? In an address to the graduating class at Harvard, J.K. talked about her failures: “You might never fail on the scale I did. But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you fail by default.”
Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Work Week was rejected by 26 publishers before one of them gave him a chance. Tim’s books have been on the best sellers lists ever since.
Bob Ballard, the explorer that found the sunken wreck of the Titanic suffered a devastating setback in 1977 when a drill pipe and the attached pod full of sonar and video gear snapped and fell into the ocean ending his first search for the famed wreck. It took Bob eight years to recover from the financial loss of that first attempt. During that time he returned to service in the US Navy and struck a deal with them to build a new deep-submersible that could be used for intelligence gathering as well as searching for wrecks. In 1985 Bob and his team found the ship they had been searching for.
All of these people had to overcome obstacles to make their dreams come true. Each of them could have easily given up in the face of adversity. Instead they kept believing that they could make their dreams come true, and they did. Start with something simple, complete dance mat typing level 1 stage 1 – home row successfully!
How long have you been chasing your dreams?
For my family and I, our dream has been to buy a sailboat, sell our house and all of our “stuff”, move onto the boat and go where the wind takes us. We want to explore the North American coast, transit the Panama Canal, and even explore the Mediterranean Sea and the South Pacific Islands. For over 10 years we kept that dream in front of us. Late in 2012, just when things were looking bleak, we found a sailboat that was close enough to drive to for an inspection, that was in our price range, and would make a good first boat for our cruising.
Right when it would have been easiest to say, “Forget it. We don’t need a boat anyway”, we were able to find what we were looking for and were in a position to move forward with making the dream a reality.
What dreams do you have that are in danger of being forgotten? How long have you been chasing those dreams? Are you willing to keep chasing them?
You just don’t know how close you are to making them come true.
A chance meeting. An article you stumble upon in your browser. A promotion that is coming your way.
The possibilities are endless, as long as you don’t give up. The only absolute is that if you do give up on your dreams, there is no way for you to achieve them.
Five steps to making your dreams come true
- Never. Give. Up. If you give up on your dreams, then they will die. Period. Your dreams belong to you. No one else will ever have the interest and passion in making them come true that you do. No one else will ever work as hard, or be rewarded as deeply, in making your dreams come true. If it is going to happen, it will happen because of you and your efforts.
- Know what makes you happy. This is much easier to say than to do. So often we don’t take the deep hard look into ourselves to find out what makes us tick. Most people take the easy way out and chase after those things that their friends and family are chasing after. That is the wrong way to go. You need to first understand what truly makes you happy. Only then can you begin to carve a path to that destination.
- Create your own definition of Success. Don’t let anyone else define your dream for you. Only you can decide what success looks like for you. Society will have no problem trying to make your definition of success match up with theirs. Don’t let them do that. They have their lives to live and you have yours. Follow your star, not theirs.
- Create a map. Like any other journey you need to know three things. Where you are starting from, where you want to go, and how to get there. Take inventory of where you are right now in relation to your dreams. This is your starting point. Since you have already defined your dreams and your success you know where you are headed. Now you just have to figure out what the gap is and start filling it. Break down the things you need to do into small, attainable steps and put them into order so you have a list of tasks.
- Work your ass off. Work on the number one task like your life depends on it because the life you dream of does depend on it. Focus all of your free time on accomplishing that one task. Know that watching the latest episode of Survivor won’t get you any closer to your goal. Neither will organizing your sock drawer. Those things can wait until you have achieved your goals and made your dreams come true. Then if you want to catch up on your shows or organize your closet, you can do that with the satisfaction of knowing that you put in the work to make your dreams come true.
By never giving up, your dreams always have a fighting chance. No matter how long it takes, keep chasing them. They are counting on you to do what it takes to make them a reality.
Announcing the Freedom Foundation Sessions
If, after reading this you are saying to yourself, “That is great, but I have no freaking clue on where to start!” then I have a way to help you get started…
We here at Route To Freedom know where you are coming from. We’ve chased our dream for over a decade now. We have made just about every wrong turn that could possibly be made in that time. In spite of our failures, we have made significant progress towards our long term goals.
In that time we also learned a lot of lessons. Lessons we want to share with you to help you reach your goals in a lot less time than it took us.
We are starting the Freedom Foundation Sessions to help you figure out where to start and to help you with your map to making your dreams come true.
The really exciting part is that we are giving away 5 Freedom Foundation Sessions to you, our readers!
We will be selecting 5 people at random to receive the Freedom Foundation Session for free. All you have to do is leave a comment below, sharing your biggest frustration in making your dreams come true.
So, go to the Freedom Foundation Sessions page and see if it is something that you would help you find your freedom. If it is, come back here and leave a comment letting us know what your biggest frustration is.
On Feb. 1st we’ll pick 5 commentors and contact you to schedule a time for your Freedom Foundation Session!
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