Talk yourself INTO Dreaming Big!

If you had the chance to give yourself a potentially life-changing gift that wouldn’t cost you a cent, would you take it? The only catch would be that you need to allow yourself the luxury of having unscheduled time in your day to dream big. Still interested? 

Good, because on the path from childhood to adulthood, dreaming can be something that gets pushed aside. It’s labelled as a waste of time as we become more engrossed in busyness. But it turns out that dreaming has tremendous value because it helps set intentions that prime us to recognize when situations we encounter in our lives are there as catalysts. 

Big dreams spark something inside of us. Not only do they ignite our imagination and creativity, but they also give our lives purpose and help us learn more about ourselves.

They show us what we’re interested in and give us both a vision and direction for what we can achieve. 

You need a dream

I still remember the conversation Janice and I had when we were kids, hanging out at the playground on a lazy summer day. Inevitably our talk drifted to that age-old question about what each of us wanted to be when we grew up. Janice was all of 10 years old, but the conviction in her response was just amazing. She had thought about this long and hard, and her big dream was already set when she answered, “well, of course, David, I plan on being a doctor. I am going to help people get well.” Think about this. She’d made a bold and inspiring statement about something that was going to happen pretty far in the future. Fast forward to today, and she’s done just that. 

Be persistent. Don’t abandon it.

A life-long friend of mine trained as an IT professional. But his talents with a hammer and saw always made it abundantly clear within our circle that Paul’s passion was to design and build things on the ground, not in the clouds. Well over a year ago, he set out to create a waterfront for a property he and his wife owned. Most of us would have run an RFP to look at contractors who could do the job. Not Paul. He dreamed and started on the design. It’s not been easy. Setbacks, like early snow in November, having to construct using a complicated building code, and of course, a global pandemic may have caused other people to give up and hire someone else to finish. Again, not Paul. He’s documented weekly progress and reaping the rewards of following through on a project that’s feeding his purpose.

Recognize that there is value in both successes and setbacks. It can inspire others.

I also think there’s much more payoff in understanding the journey of how someone got to where there are today by learning about the hurdles they faced and jumped over, one at a time. You can’t argue that Bezos’ Amazon, Branson’s Virgin, Lütke’s Shopify, and Musk’s Tesla and Space X aren’t success stories for what they’ve been able to achieve so far. It’s easy to hold them up as models for inspiration. They are constantly in the news, being studied, and will likely continue to be the subject of documentaries for years to come. But remember that you don’t always have to focus on just the big players. There’s a lot of goodness and inspiration happening all around you, much closer to home than you perhaps realize. The person who quietly perseveres can go a long way to showing us what is possible.

Have I got you thinking about what your big dream is now? You’ve got to make time to do “nothing” but dream. Then you have to decide on it, so you don’t spin your wheels. Finally, you need to start talking about it and writing it down to lock in your commitment. Marrying the dreaming with intention setting will help you stay on course and deliver on what you want to achieve in the long run.