Nurture Your Dreams

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.
Jim Hightower, The New York Times, March 9, 1986

It’s so absurd today how many people in the early days mocked ideas that have changed the world ever since those ideas were realized. They were touted as ridiculous and crazy. Many authors of these crazy ideas have even been scorned at because their ideas were impossible. How many among us have been laughed at for lack of “realistic” ideas and for having silly thoughts about what we hope to become, what we hope to achieve or what we hope to produce in hopes of simply making our lives better or to achieve greatness? We fell many times at the first or second step of our strides toward achieving our goals simply because we were so discouraged by what other people might say about our ideas. “I wish to become a successful entrepreneur, but I don’t have a university degree. I don’t even know how to sell.” You’d recognize these people everywhere! They are the I-wish-to-but type. How typical.

I am reminded here of the way a child grows up with what we call diminishing dreams. You know this. As a child, one is so fascinated about airplanes. A child can’t quite get used to the sight of that giant steel bird hovering over the sky. The child eagerly wanted to own one when he grows up. But the “realities” of life slowly creep in to his life as he grow up and as he gradually becomes so accustomed to life’s norms he gives up all his enthusiasm to one day buy his own plane. Why? As he grows up he is being taught that he needed to go to school to earn enough for himself, to pay for the bills and to feed the family. Seeing dad had to toil everyday just to bring the bacon to the table everyday the child saw a trend and saw the “realities” of his dream slowly transform to become just another dream. His overall paradigm about life has already become one that is very much like every adult’s.

Nurturing your dreams
Even small dreams are seeds of greatness. They don’t have to die out simply because other people think that your dreams are ridiculous or impossible. Consider these:

• Before airplanes were built, the idea of a flying machine was ridiculous. More so was the idea of man one day flying through the air by these machines.
• When the airplane was at last realized, someone thought it had no military significance.
• A great inventor once said that man will never reach the moon “…regardless of any future advancement in technology”.
• Thomas Edison’s light bulb was deemed impractical.
  
  

I can go on forever with a list of silly thoughts about man’s achievements before they were realized. But the point that I would like for you to take away from here is that small dreams are grand schemes of thought that need to be nurtured to grow big enough to compel one to act. Every great thing started with one small idea. Take a moment to think about what I just said. EVERY GREAT THING STARTED WITH ONE SMALL IDEA. Ideas are one of the inevitable keys of personal success.

If you just had that “a-hah!” instant right now don’t waste any moment. Write it down this very second before it slips your mind later. Ideas are sometimes sneaky. They’d flash through like a slide show that you’d forget any detail of the picture you just saw. Here’s how you should nurture your dream.

1. If an idea, however small that may be, hits you and you feel that the idea is really something, think it through several times until you start to feel your heart racing at the thought of realizing that idea.
2. Write it down. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having a pen and a small notebook handy.
3. Outline the tentative description of how you are going to attain this idea. At this point you don’t have to be very specific. You can write down the applicable steps of how to realize this idea after the next two steps.
4. Read out loud several times what you just wrote until it feels like a drum is forcing it to your brain. Let it stick. Let it catch fire inside your head.
5. Now go back to the mental exercise described in How To Make Desire Even More Powerful. Make the mental picture of your idea perfect. Make it three dimensional that you could almost touch it.
6. Write down the specific action plan to realize this goal and start right away. Remember the saying “Strike while the iron is hot”?
   
   

By doing these steps you are watering the seeds of greatness. As you can see I didn’t point out any specific “small” idea anywhere in this post as only you know that. And remember, just as a wildfire devouring acres and acres of land covered with dry grass and trees started with a small spark, so are our ideas.

Up next we’ll take a look at why people fail.

Home

Marry this with Desire to effectively make things go your way

Is your desire already white hot that you’re now ready to act towards achieving it? Is it already so vivid in your mind that you could almost touch it? Is your engine revving up to make you run towards it?

So you’ve already laid out your action plans. You’ve created visual images of the thing that you so desire and you regularly check on it mentally to keep your mind focused on it. Almost instantly you’d start to feel that you are eventually going to have it. You know it’s yours for the taking! Now that’s a firm conviction no one can take away from you. You now have belief. What is it? How essential is belief in achieving any goal?

Belief is a mental process which is synonymous to faith and expectation. Belief is an assumption of things as truth. With belief you expect the most likely thing to happen in the future as a result of your actions. You believe, for example, that you will get a better job when you graduate from college than when you don’t. So you go to college, expecting to achieve what you believe is true, that is, that you’re going to have a finer job at some corporation seeking the best university produce like the one you’re going to be. Of course, belief, as it is widely held today, is anchored on instances that have previously happened, as in the case of college graduates landing better careers than those who dropped out. Well, at least, that’s what our parents and teachers told us. (But then we saw what happened to Bill Gates when he dropped out – he built an empire. Now we start to believe in something else.)

While it is true that a college education is important as it shapes the world that we live in so we could have doctors, engineers, teachers and other professionals who make our world a better place to live in, it is not a pre-requisite to attaining success in whatever endeavor that we wish to succeed. Remember Mr. Barnes? He desired to work with Edison and he believed he could. And because he believed, he did eventually work with Edison.

Belief is so powerful that it empowers many people to make things happen, but also brings many people to a halt while on their way to attaining their goal. “Established” beliefs are turning many of us off to discontinue pursuing our dreams. Beliefs such as just because one is poor one can’t have the best things in life or just because one doesn’t have a college degree he can’t build an empire turns many average people off. These are socially-induced beliefs. But, however established those beliefs are, you have the power to change them.

Stop for a while and think about what I just said.

You have the power to change your belief. You have the power.

Just exercise that power enough and you’ll inevitably attain what you want. All you need to do is to learn how to program your mind to make it instantly believe that success will be yours.

The power of mental programming
When you have a goal, believe that you are going to achieve it. In fact, you must act as if you already own it. Remember, the brain works towards its most current dominant thought and “whatever the mind can conceive the body can achieve.”

Let’s take a look again at one of the examples that I previously gave about the sales manager who wanted to own a house at a posh neighborhood that he chose. He didn’t have that house yet at that time. He did not even have a car yet. Those were just figments of his mind. Yet he believed he could achieve his goal. He believed no one can ever stop him. He believed it so much that he carried himself as if he already had those things he so coveted. He would borrow his friend’s car and drive around that neighborhood and he would even enter into one of the open houses just to feel his goal. He did that regularly until he finally bought one of the posh houses…and his own car. He programmed his mind so that he believed that he already had his goals. Another thing to point out here is that he turned believing into a habit.

So each time you think about your goal, believe that you’ll have it by programming your mind to think as if you already have it. Here’s how:

1. Clear your mind before finally thinking about your goal.
2. Focus your mind on your goal, visualize and describe it in your mind clearly, define the shape and color, make it very clear that you can almost touch it.
3. Do some role playing if you have to like what that the sales manager did – he felt his goal.
4. See yourself as someone who already owns your goal. Think that you already achieved your goal. You already have it.
5. Do this everyday. I can’t emphasize this enough. Set a specific time for doing this each day. In fact, do this whenever you can. Make it a habit. MAKE BELIEVING A HABIT.

Each time you want something believe that you are going to have it. Train your mind to accept it as something that is already true. Carry yourself as if you already have it. Do this constantly. Make believing that you’re going to achieve what you want a habit. Remember that just like any other habits, good or bad, they are formed after a couple of days of being exercised. Why not make believing in attaining something that you want your best habit?

Belief is a very powerful mental process. Use it to become powerful. You want to become successful, don’t you? Ask those who already are. They’ve capitalized on it.

Up next, we’ll discuss why you shouldn’t let other people turn you off whenever an idea, however simple and small it may be, hits you.