Walt Disney said, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
Success is all about the courage of conviction. This is especially true when you decide to”go for it.” Conviction (belief), coupled with courage, confidence, aspiration, and passion are the ingredients necessary for a fully baked plan to rise and prosper.
Opinion
Henry David Thoreau, the American author of “Walden” and other books, said, “I learned that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with unexpected, wonderful success.”
Why is it important to have dreams? Why is it important to follow your dreams?
- Without dreams and aspirations, you can quickly move from hopeful to hopeless. Without dreams, you have little to live for.
- Dreams keep you young. They provide motivation to think and act for tomorrow and the future. Dreams bring forth optimism.
- As a child and young adult, you chased dreams constantly. Now, with more maturity, you have the benefit and wisdom to selectively choose those realistic dreams that make sense and have personal relevancy.
- Your dreams are exclusively owned by you. You have the pride of ownership, and if your dreams are realized, you also have the power of accomplishment and pride.
- Dreams have no limits. After all, there is only one rule in life, and that one rule is there are no rules! Don’t forget you created your dreams. They operate under your rules.
- There is nothing sweeter than seeing a dream come true. Regardless of how massive or minute, the realization of a dream is absolute bliss.
Once you’ve decided and defined your objectives (short- or long-term), it’s vital to dream about your endgame. Beginning with the end in mind through creative visualization can be incredibly beneficial in building your plan. Creative visualization is the cognitive process of purposefully generating visual mental images, with your eyes open or closed, and working to visualize what something will look like at the end of the endeavor.
It’s the golfer who stares at his ball on the green before ever pulling his putter out of the bag, then mentally visualizes softly stroking the ball as it rolls straight into the cup. In his mind, he might even hear the ball drop into the hole, ka-plink.
Creatively visualizing what a dream, hope or aspiration might look like once you complete the activity helps you dive into the process. Once you visualize something and emotionally feel what the endeavor would be like at successful conclusion, it provides motivation that will likely lead you to focus and work. After all, dream fulfillment is about work.
Everything in life and business, for that matter, is 5% idea (or dream) and 95% work (implementation).
All three of my sons played college basketball. When my youngest son, Ryan, was a high-scoring shooting guard on his high school team, he suffered from poor performance on the foul line. Although he would score shot after shot on the court, when he was fouled, he was very inefficient at shooting foul shots. He met with a friend of mine, Dr. Jack Llewellyn, a prominent sports psychologist. He told Ryan, “If you go out on your driveway every day and take fifty slow, form-perfect foul shots a day, you’ll dramatically improve your foul shooting percentage.”
Ryan was confused and replied, “Dr. Jack, I do that now. In fact, I probably shoot one hundred foul shots a day, but my shooting percentage is not growing.” Jack surprisingly responded with, “Ryan, what I want you to do differently is take those fifty-plus perfect shots every day without the ball. Yes, shoot without the ball, and visualize the perfect shot going in the goal… shot after shot after shot.”
So Ryan went out every day and creatively visualized his shot and saw the imaginary ball go in the basket shot after shot after shot. The funny thing about it was that my next door neighbor called me one evening and said, “Ira, I’ve watched Ryan practice basketball in your driveway day after day. You, my friend are a real cheapskate. Get him a ball… if you can’t afford one, I’ll get him a present.”
The remark was funny, but Ryan’s success on the foul line led him to becoming a leader on the foul line and a record holder in both high school and college.
You, too, dear reader, need to define your objectives and visualize every step needed to successfully complete the task at hand and fulfill dream by dream.
As my friend Steven Tyler (Aerosmith) wrote, “Dream on.”
Ira Blumenthal is a business consultant, a best-selling author, Georgia resident, a globally renowned public speaker, a university educator and a college Lacrosse coach. Ira welcomes inquiries and can be reached at Ira@Iraspeak.com. His web site is www.IraSpeak.com
