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How You Can Achieve Your Dream Life

HOW YOU CAN ACHIEVE YOUR DREAM LIFE

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Are you where you want to be in life? Do you feel like you should have been further along by now? Are there dreams you had set for yourself that you have not yet realized?

My aspirational word for this year is DREAM.  It is my word because I have so much inside of me that is awakening once again.  So much to give, so much to create, so much to imagine and a brand new clean slate to do it in.

Definitions of The Word "Dream"

The word “dream” can have two completely opposite meanings.  One is “an unrealistic or self-deluding fantasy” and the other is “to contemplate the possibility of doing something or that something might be the case”.

The difference between which definition of a dream you have is whether you do something to manifest it or not.   If you contemplate the possibility of doing something this year, but you sit back and do nothing to move that idea forward, then your dream is simply a self-deluding fantasy.  

But if you make this year the year of your Dream, and you take steps to make it happen, you can bring your dream to life.

The choice is yours.

What is holding you back? There are a few main reasons why we don’t pursue our dreams.

4 Reasons We Don't Pursue Our Dreams

1. WE DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START

One of main reasons we decide not to do anything to accomplish the dream we have in our mind is because we don’t know where to start.  Because I care about you, I’m going to give it to you straight.  This is a weak-sauce excuse.  At no other time in history has it been easier for humans to find out how to accomplish their dreams than it is today. Thank you, Google! I like to call Google the “great equalizer”.  It gives the educated and non-educated alike access to the same information if they are motivated enough to search for it.  Finding out how to do anything is nothing but a search query away.  Don’t limit yourself with this excuse. Set a timer for 10 minutes sometime today and research your dream’s starting point.

2. WE ARE AFRAID OF FAILURE

Dreaming is a scary business.  Dreaming out loud and attempting to do something to accomplish that dream is even scarier.  What if you fail? What if you risk and don’t get the reward?  What if you look like a fool? Fear of failure is why many of us don’t take the chance on our dreams.  We choose the life of comfort over the life of significance but what we don’t realize is we risk so much more by being comfortable than we would by trying to pursue our dream.  Take a calculated risk on your dream.  Count the cost of what it would take to pursue it, make a plan to get there and then do it.

3. WE FORGET THEM

Once upon a time we dreamed big dreams of becoming something great or doing something great or going somewhere great but something happened, we grew up.  We stopped dreaming.  We settled into the “American Dream” of a job with a 2-week vacation and a house with a 2-car garage. And we forgot all about the dreams inside of us.  We told ourselves “dreams are for adolescents or college kids, but not for those of us with responsibilities”.

An Awesome BookMy favorite book to read to my son at bedtime is An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton.  One of the lines is “Please dream for those who’ve given up, for those who’ve never tried.  Please use your dreams to make new dreams for all the dreams that died.” 

Somewhere along the line, life has gotten in the way of living. And now it feels too late to do anything else.  The truth is it that as long as you have breath, it is never too late to start living.  And you don’t necessarily have to quit your day-job to do it. You can use your comfortable job to fuel your dreams but you have to remember them.  You have to start dreaming again.

4. WE DON'T BELIEVE

We often decide not to pursue our dreams because we don’t have anyone to believe in us.  We don’t have anyone to support us. Our family tells us we can’t do it.  Our friends tell us it’s a stupid idea.  The end result, we don’t believe in ourselves. So we shrink back.  We let our dream die.

We resolve ourselves to play the hand life has dealt us instead of trying to trade up for a better hand because we don’t believe a better hand is possible for us.

You could say the world dealt me a bad hand.  I wasn’t born into wealth or privilege.  My father was diagnosed with Schizophrenia when I was 4 years old.  We were on food stamps and welfare because my Dad couldn’t work.  My home environment was unstable and abusive. Sometimes my Dad would get drunk and become violent toward my mom.  I was the star witness.  We moved multiple times as a result of being evicted despite my mom working 3 jobs to support us.  Each move meant leaving behind my friends and my school and starting all over again as the new girl.  When I was 12, my parents divorced.  Game over, right? So many people let their dreams die when their family falls apart or they don’t dare to dream because they don’t believe they can have a better life.

I used my circumstances to fuel my dream of escaping that life and I believed I could.  I used to pray every night for a way out.  I remember feeling so inspired when Mariah Carey’s “Make it Happen” single came out.  The lyrics were “And if you get you down on your knees at night and pray to the Lord, He’s gonna make it happen, make it happen”.  I believed that education was my ticket out. No one in my family had gone to college.  But I had teachers who believed in me.  They told me I could go to college.  Because they believed in me, I applied to schools I had no business applying to and I was accepted, but had no way to pay for them. 

I prayed God would make a way for me to go to the school of my dreams in Malibu, California and I received a full financial aid package to Pepperdine University complete with room and board.  God used that school to change the course of my life. 

Realizing that first big dream opened the door for me to be able to accomplish many more dreams.  Studying abroad in Italy, having a successful career in advertising, traveling, just to name a few. But I would not have ever done any of that had I not believed in my dream and had others to believe in me.

I am here to tell you I believe in you.  I believe in your God-given potential.  I believe in your dream.  I believe you can take that possibility of doing something great that you have in your mind and make it happen. I believe you can make it more than just a self-deluding fantasy.

7 DAY LIFE REFOCUS CHALLENGE

I believe in you so much that I am launching a 7 Day Life Refocus Challenge to help you re-discover your dream and move it forward.  And I’m giving it to you for free.  

Sometimes we need someone to motivate us to dream again.  Like getting a personal trainer to help us lose weight having someone to help us do the right exercises, keep focus and follow through can be just what we need to get us unstuck.

The 7 Day Life Refocus Challenge is where you purge your mind of old ideas, old thinking and renew it to make room to dream again.  Where old dreams are resurrected and new dreams emerge. It’s where you create a process for attaining them. 

Sign Up for my FREE 7 Day Life Refocus Challenge and get daily direction on how to move forward. Each day we will cover a different area of your life to refocus on.  I pull together insights from my own experience, research from psychologists and other success experts to walk you through refocusing on your dreams step by step.

Each day you will receive an email from me with motivation and instruction for what you need to do next. Each day we will focus on a new task to move forward to the next step.

Challenge Outline

Day 1: Your Life Assessment

Day 2: Your Life Dreams

Day 3: Your Thinking:

Day 4: Your Process:

Day 5: Your Goals: (niche down)

Day 6: Your Schedule

Day 7: Your Execution Plan

At the end of the 7 Day Life Refocus Challenge you will have clarity for what dreams you want to accomplish and you will have created a plan to execute them.

Don’t let another year pass you by without living the life you were meant to live.  Take the 7 Day Life Refocus Challenge and pursue your dream this year!

Sign Up Now!

Welcome to Honey & Figs! I'm Lisa. I love helping people with practical ways to live more abundant lives based on my own experience. You can click here to find out more about me.

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Comments 9

    1. Post
      Author

      ah, yes. I was exactly where you are 7 months ago. I had no idea what my dreams were either, so I had to start dreaming again. The first thing you can do is reframe the question from “what are your dreams” to “what is it you would like to accomplish in your life?” or “What do you want your life to look like in 5 years?”. Other questions to ask might be: “What is the contribution you want to make to the world when you die” or “In what way, small or large, can you leave the world a better place because you lived?”

      I wrote a post about my journey to discovering my purpose, which was my first step. You can read it here: http://honeyandfigs.com/discover-your-superpower/

      Through it, I found that I’m really good at productivity and I really care about living a life of meaning.

      Then I needed to start dreaming again so I took myself through a whole bunch of questions and exercises and discovered a few of my dreams are to:
      be financially independent
      to leave a legacy for my son
      to help others find meaning

      I put all the questions and exercises together and created the 7-Day Life Refocus Challenge. Going through that process might help you find your dream and I’m offering it for free.
      I hope this helps. I know how it feels to not have any dreams too. The good news is you’re never too old to start dreaming.

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