Big dreams can feel out of reach, especially for high-achievers used to working within the realm of possibility. But what if the key to realizing your dreams is more simple than you think? In this episode of the Mindlab I walk you through my five-step framework to act on your dreams. Learn how to believe in your vision, make aligned decisions, and take intentional action toward your goals. Your dreams deserve your attention—and this is the perfect place to start.
I am so excited you’re here. And today we’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is dreams. Do you have them, do you know them and what are you doing with them? So we’re going to talk about all those things today. If you’re not in touch with your dreams, that’s okay.
We’re going to walk through something that’s going to give you some prompts to really take a look. And I’m going to begin this with giving you permission to go look. There are so there’s so much culturally going on that it’s like, oh, later, one day, someday, you know this concept, at least in this country. Oh, when I retire, I will. And dreams are something that is just sewn into you.
We are all on this planet with a gift, and often those dreams are very aligned with what our real gift is. So I encourage you to take the next few minutes to be here with your attention and let’s take a look not only on what your dreams are, but how to go to act on them. I decided to look up the definition of dreams because I have my own, which I talk about a lot, and it was really interesting. So, you know the first from the Cambridge dictionary, the first one is the series of events or images that happen in your mind when you’re sleeping. Right.
I had a dream. The other definition is something you want to happen very much, but that is not very likely. And that really, it blew my mind. And it also is very much a reflection of often how we think about the dreams we have. Kind of put them on the back burner or deprioritize them or as I said, I had somebody I talked to not that long ago that says, I have no idea what my dreams are.
So here’s my definition of dream. And I already talked about it a little bit, but it’s that. It’s that it is something that is sown inside you, meaning you may have a desire that comes up like, I want to buy a house. I’ve always wanted to buy a house. I want to buy a house.
Right? And then you buy the house and you know, that’s it. A dream is something that is not. Or let me rephrase, you don’t buy a house, you buy a condo. And that’s okay.
You’re actually very happy there. It’s not like, oh my gosh, I need to buy a house. It’s a dream is something that will continue to come up. It’s not going to go away. And so that’s one Way to define it.
The other thing, as I said, it’s aligned to the gift that you have inside you.
So if you are unaware of your dreams, I’m going to give you a writing exercise. It’s not very long. Get a pen, get some paper, and I want you to answer these questions. Okay? If time were not a factor, what I would love to do is.
So again, if time were not a factor, what I would love to do is. Okay, next one. If time were not a factor, what I would love to be is.
And if time were not a factor, what I would love to have is my encouragement to you is allow yourself to just put down whatever, get out of the how. Because often we’ll stop ourselves from dreaming because we think we need to know how to do it. The how is not for you. Okay? This is all about the what.
So if time were not a factor, I would love to do. If time were not a factor, I would love to be. Time were not a factor, I would love to have. Okay, now there’s three more. You’ll see the pattern.
If money were not a factor, I would love to do.
If money were not a factor, I would love to be. And if money were not a factor, I would love to have.
So my encouragement to you is take each of those and just write. Don’t think about what you’re writing. Just write what you’re thinking. Find some quiet space. This can be done in 10, 15 minutes.
And it may be interesting to see what comes out of your pen or pencil or crayon. And also there may be a theme. There may be something there that you haven’t consciously seen before. If you already know your dreams, you can still do this. This might give you some other insights.
Especially if you’re not going after your dreams right now, they may be up on a shelf. This can really help re energize what you already know to be true.
I would definitely love to hear what your dreams are. You can always let me know and that would be awesome. So, okay, now I want to go into what do I do with this dream? And just some mechanics of how.
How it works. You know, often people, we don’t go after our dreams because it’s not always easy and it’s not always logical, meaning it doesn’t always look good on the outside. It’s not what we’ve done before. So those close to us can start to get a little jittery around it or what are you doing? And so this is just a framework.
This is an encouragement to go after them, to act on them. And that doesn’t mean you have to drop everything in your life right now to go do this. My encouragement is that you take a look, put some attention, put some focus towards this. And again, it’s not all or nothing. This is both.
And so I am going to show you a couple pictures. Right.
Oops. Let’s see.
Let me draw that one more time.
There we go. All right, so the first part of dreaming is imagining. So you have an idea of what your dream is. And then you know, our brains do not understand reality from virtual reality. And so in this, for this framework, it’s like building a train station, building a destination, imagining.
What does it look like? Again, not the how, just the what. What does it feel like when you’re doing that thing that is drawing you? There’s no wrong answers here, okay? This is taking time to picture it, to, you know, feel it.
So that’s the first step. Imagine what it’s like the next step. So you have the vision. That’s the train station. The next step is believe it’s possible.
Do not listen to the Cambridge dictionary. Believe it’s possible. When you believe that it’s possible, you don’t have to know how. Please don’t try to think about how. It’s not your job.
Actually, when you believe it is possible, then there is a path here. It’s a train track, but there is a path that is drawn from where you are to that destination.
You don’t draw it. It is drawn. There is a way to get there, and it’s not always straight. But for this picture, this is, you know, it’s a. It’s a train track.
So you imagine, you envision it. You believe it’s possible. The next one is you decide. You make a decision. You know what, I’m going after that.
I don’t know how it’s gonna happen. I don’t have all the information, but I’m going to decide. Decision is such a decision means to cut everything away and actually decide. It doesn’t mean riding the fence. It doesn’t mean trying it out.
It’s deciding, you know what, I’m gonna go. Going to take some of my time and attention to move towards that vision. When you do that, when you decide, then there’s a train that gets put on that track. There is a way for you to get there.
Next one, you declare it. So I have some other vlogs that talk about what the ratio is of something. If you just decide and you do it yourself without letting other People know with speaking it out, you have about a 5 to 15% chance of it being successful. When you declare it, you increase that by about 50% or 2, 50% in general. So declare it.
You know what, I have this dream and it is to, you know, it is to write a novel. That’s one of my dreams, is to write a novel. Speak it now. You don’t have to speak it to the world.
Speak it to. If you have an accountability partner, speak it to them. If you have a dear friend that is not going to tell you how to do it, speak it to them. If you need somebody to declare it to, let me know. I would love to be the ear for that.
Okay, so when you declare it, okay, so you envision it. The train station’s built, you believe it’s possible. The track gets built. You decide you’re going to take time and attention. The train gets put on the track.
When you declare it, the first. The first step comes into view and it’s one step at a time. It’s one goal at a time. Okay, so you’ve envisioned it, you believe it’s possible, you’ve decided to go after it, you’ve declared it, and these steps show up. Resources show up.
You continue with your intention, remind yourself of what your dream is, Remind yourself that you’re doing this. Get an accountability partner. You know, it continues. It’s a regular commitment. You are not going to see all the steps.
Please. This is the part of acting on it. You’re not gonna. Do not wait to see all the steps to get there. All you need is one.
And when you take that, guess what? Then you see the next one. Somebody shows up and tells you what the next one is or something happens and it becomes very clear. And. And you’re never gonna see all the steps all at once.
I think that is a benefit because sometimes when you get further in, if you had known all the steps to get there, it, it might have kept you from doing it.
So one step at a time, Intention, commitment, believing it’s possible.
This is how you go after your dreams. My encouragement to you is do it in community of other dreamers that are going after the heirs. If you want to know more, this is what I do with many, many people. And if you’re interested, let me know. And no matter what, please give attention to your dreams.
It’s so very important. They’re yours, they’re nobody else’s. And you know, you deserve to see where they might take you. So until next time.
