Everyone has certain dreams for their life – a vision, or visions, of how things would look if the stars aligned and you could choose your ideal circumstances and outcomes.
Some of those dreams might involve things like landing the perfect job and having the satisfaction of feeling genuinely passionate about what you do for a living – whether that means being an artist, a successful entrepreneur, helping other people, or any number of other things. Other dreams will have to do with things like where you live, the types of relationships you have with the people close to you, the skills you’ve developed, the hobbies and pastimes you enjoy, and so on.
Of course, the thing about dreams is that they all too often stay dreams instead of becoming manifest in reality – and far too many people don’t even make an earnest attempt at achieving their dreams, but rather allow them to remain as wistful fantasies of a perfect life that seems out of reach.
In life, it’s never possible to know just what is or isn’t possible, or what could or couldn’t be, unless you really commit yourself to the effort, and strive to reach your desired outcome. By working to achieve your dreams, you will at the very least make life feel much more compelling and interesting, and will likely learn a lot, and achieve a lot that’s worthwhile, even if you fall short of your ultimate goal – or end up adjusting that goal.
In any case, here are a few practical tips for achieving your dreams – or, at least, increasing the likelihood that you will achieve your dreams.
Have a Clear Idea of What You Want
If you don’t know where you want to go, no map will help you to get there, and no signs will point you in the right direction. Time passes by quickly in life, and we all tend to get swept along on the currents, in one direction or another, by events that happen to us, the consequences actions we take on a regular basis, and the decisions made by others which affect our lives abstractly in one way or another. All this means that if you don’t have a very clear idea of what you want, you may easily end up drifting around more or less endlessly for years, or even for your entire life.
For this reason, dreams which are vague, poorly defined, and abstract, stand very little chance of being realised or making a substantial impact. They just don’t have the force and clarity required to really serve as an effective target and destination. In order to make sure that you are able to steer yourself clearly towards your desired outcome, and to ensure that you’re able to adjust your sails as necessary when you are distracted or blown off course by external circumstances, you need to have a clear idea of what you want. In order to develop a clear vision of the dream you want to achieve, you should spend a good amount of time by yourself thinking things through, and visualising your ideal scenario.
It may be that ideas will flow more freely when you are out for a stroll, or it could be that you need to sit down with a notepad and pen and draft out your ideas by hand until you come up with something that feels right. You should, by all means, use external resources to help you visualise and specify your dreams, too.
For example, looking at the selection of luxury homes available via a company such as https://www.camijoneshomes.com/kansas-city-homes-for-sale/ might really help you to get a clear sense of the kind of place you’d like to live in one day, as well as helping you to visualise yourself actually living there in reality.
Fully Utilise the Power of Habit in an Intentional Way
The idea of “achieving a dream” can seem like such a big and grandiose ambition, that is natural to look for big, dramatic actions that will get you there.
Sometimes, there will indeed be big dramatic actions to take, but more often you will stand the best chance of achieving your dreams by focusing primarily on everyday habits and incremental actions that are far less dramatic in and of themselves, but that will nonetheless steer you closer and closer to your desired destination.
The habit writer and coach, James Clear, describes habits as daily “votes” for the person you want to become. A goal, in and of itself, is all very well – but if you simply focus on the goal and not on the systems that will get you there, you can easily become distracted, complacent, and can struggle to identify the best way to act on any given day.
If you want to get into great shape, you need to establish the daily habits of regularly working out and sticking to your nutrition plan. Only these actions, repeated over and over again, will get you to where you want to be. By the same token, creating a successful business will largely come down to the things that you do every day, rather than the big one-off deals or events.
Stay Action-Focused, and Avoid Excessive Rumination
“Analysis paralysis” is a very real phenomenon, and it has an ability to completely sabotage your dreams, and to undermine your overall quality of life in a truly tragic way.
The psychologist Barry Schwartz, author of the book “The Paradox of Choice,” has outlined striking research showing that the more options people have, and the more decisions they have to make, the likelier they are to just become completely passive and make no decisions whatsoever.
In the pursuit of your dream, it can seem as though you need to sit down and work every variable out perfectly in theory before you begin taking action. This is largely a backwards approach, though, and will almost certainly do you more harm than good. What you really need to do is to identify just enough of the road ahead to begin walking down it, and then you have to start taking action as soon as possible, and remain action-focused going forward. If you do things this way, you will be able to learn and adjust as you go, you will develop real momentum, and you’ll figure things out in practice that you never could have figured out “at the drawing board.”
Avoid excessive rumination, and be active.
Keep Your Spirits Up, and Engage in Activities That Help to Fuel a Confident and Positive Outlook
If you allow yourself to become completely demoralised, and to constantly end up operating out of a sense of anxiety, despondency, and hopelessness, the odds that you will achieve your dreams – or that you would be able to properly enjoy them even if you did achieve them – are low.
It’s essential that you come up with techniques and strategies that can help to keep your spirits up, and that fuel a confident and positive outlook, in general. Part of this will inevitably involve taking care of your physical health to the best of your ability – making sure that you’re sleeping enough (and well enough), are eating a balanced and nutritious diet, and aren’t deficient in any essential vitamins and minerals. Another big part of this, however, will be exposing yourself primarily to images and information streams that correlate with the kind of mindset you want to nurture – and minimising the ones that correlate with the opposite mindset.
In other words, surround yourself with things that inspire you, uplift you, and that help you to believe in your own potential and in the possibilities that lie ahead.
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