Goals and Dreams

Do you have any goals?  Not just dreams, but real goals?

You should actually have both.  As Napoleon Hill said, a goal is a dream with a deadline.  The starting point is therefore a dream.  You must always dream, or eventually you will run out of goals.

Some people feel that dreaming is a waste of time and energy.  The term "daydream" is used more often than not as a criticism.  But dreaming is most definitely NOT a waste of time and energy, it is something you must keep doing.  Not all the time, of course!  You don't want to spend all your time just dreaming, or you will never achieve anything.  But make sure you spend enough time dreaming to have a good supply of goals to achieve, or you will again never achieve anything.  You need to have the right balance between the two.

In my experience far too many people leave out this first step.  As a result they find they have no real goals, and wonder why life seems to have become more of a "grind" than a joyful experience.

Having dreams is a creative activity.  Turning those dreams into goals is a practical activity.  To use "Right Brain - Left Brain" terminology, the start of the process, having dreams, is a "Right Brain" activity and turning dreams into goals is a "Left Brain" activity.  You should be aware, though, that the concept of your right and left hemispheres of your brain having radically different functions is regarded by psychologists as a myth.  Psychologists say that both hemispheres work together to achieve most tasks. But perhaps another way of looking at that is the same as I am saying here - you NEED both hemispheres to be working together; you NEED both the creativity and practicality.

If you sometimes find life a bit boring I suggest you start by checking to see if you have forgotten to keep dreaming.  If you have, that is your problem.  Start creating those dreams again.  Don't worry about the fact that you cannot yet see how some of those dreams will be achieved.  Give the Universe more credit than that.  It has enormous power and that power can be harnessed to turn your dreams into reality - but only if you have those dreams in the first place!

Getting in touch with your inner child that wants to keep dreaming is therefore an extremely important step.  Don't allow the adult in your to squash that inner child!

Once you have made sure the flow of dreams is there you can move on to the next step - turning some of them into goals.  Notice I have said "some of them".  Do not try to turn them all into goals!  That is actually one way of eventually turning off the flow of dreams.  You will find many dreams cannot yet be turned into goals, and unless you watch what is happening carefully the "adult" in you will react by telling the "child" in you to stop producing dreams it cannot turn into reality.  The "child" will then follow those instructions, and the wonderful flow of dreams will diminish and eventually stop altogether.  But some of them MUST be turned into goals if you are ever going to achieve anything.  Turn them into goals by selecting the ones that most resonate with you and try to create some deadlines.  Those deadlines may be far in the future.  If they are, break down the dreams into smaller tasks which lead to achieving the ultimate dream, and apply deadlines for the first steps.

There is plenty of help online which you can tap into in order to follow both of these principles - dream more, and create more goals.  Make sure you DO tap into it, and your life will be far more exciting and far more productive.