5 Steps to Make Your Dreams a Reality
Do you start your Monday mornings by counting down the days until Friday?
Dreading Sunday evenings because it meant that you were just a few hours away from having to wake up again and go to work.
You almost have to mentally prepare yourself from that time forward just so you could handle it. Then when Monday morning finally popped up, you hit the snooze button so many times before actually getting up that you ended up being late for work.
Do you have an all-around blah feeling about life?
You hardly get excited anymore. You don’t even know what interests you. Things just aren’t the same. Something just isn’t right, or everything else is just wrong.
Do you hate hearing about other people’s success stories?
The conversation about what’s his-face landing his dream job makes your eyes roll. Or the thought of having to go to her wedding makes you uncomfortable.
You’d much rather hear about one of your old friends’ trials and tribulations. That seems more realistic, at least for you.
You can relate better to other people’s struggles because that’s exactly what you’re going through. Every day is a challenge because you’re sick of it, you’re not happy.
That’s exactly why your job isn’t doing it for you anymore, why everything seems duller and you can’t stand to hear about someone else who has avoided this completely. In your eyes their life is not real.
You can’t understand how it could be because your life is so different. They’re having the time of their lives, while you can barely stand a minute of yours.
Imagine you had to live another 40+ years feeling like this. I’m sure it gets much worse over time. But you really don’t have to find that out first hand.
What’s Your Problem
You feel and react this way because deep down inside you know something isn’t right. When you reflect on certain things daily, disgust takes over because you know it shouldn’t be that way.
Then when you hear about other people who seem to have it all figure out, you’re just sick all over again. But it doesn’t have anything to do with them. It’s all about you. Your sick when you hear about them because it forces you to think about your own life, even for a second.
If you pay close attention you’d notice your feelings are trying to tell you something.
You hate your job. You feel disconnected and envious because you are reminded that you’ve given up on your dreams while everyone else is living theirs. Now they’re celebrating little successes and you’re living with the consequences of doing nothing.
What You Have To Do
You gave up on your dreams because you really couldn’t see them being any more than that, dreams. They seemed too big, especially for little ole you.
Landing a dream job seems huge. Work accounts for much of your life. But other people still have done it. What you need to do is shrink your big dreams down to size. That way they seem less like a fantasy and more like your goals so you can tackle them.
Turning your dreams into goals, then achieving every single one, no matter the size, is the only way to live the life you want. Living the way you always imagined is a sure fire way to be truly happy every day.
- Figure out what you want
Effective goals need to be clear. If you don’t know what you want there’s no way you’re going to achieve it. You won’t know how to start or what to do. Be clear and specific.
Once you know exactly what it is, make sure it’s about you. Your goal needs to impact and benefit you. Your goals are about you. Don’t try to change someone else’s life, they won’t enjoy it and it won’t make you happy either.
- Do your homework
Sometimes our dreams remain in that state because we don’t know much about achieving them. Your dreams tend to be outside of your current world, taking you somewhere you’ve never been.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t get there. Do not let lack of knowledge stall your dreams.
If you want to achieve something that you’re not familiar with or don’t know where to start, get familiar. Do some research. Find out how others did it. Not only is researching educational, it’s motivational. In finding out how others got through it and managed to succeed, you’ll knock out any doubt that it’s not attainable. You’ll have solid evidence that it can be done.
- Set realistic expectations
As much as you’d like to be, you won’t be an overnight success. Once you figure out what you want, don’t convince yourself that you can get it in an instant.
If you do that, you’ll just be telling yourself that it cannot be done. You’ll think, if I couldn’t get it done by now, I can’t ever do it. But that’s not the case. You just have to be honest and reasonable with yourself when setting up expectations.
Everyone wants it quickly but good things take time.
- Do something
You have to take action. Wishing and hoping isn’t going to get the job done. You need to figure out what your next step is going to be and take action immediately. Don’t wait anymore.
Besides, the preliminary steps are often the easiest so it’s not like you’re going from 0-60. You’ll have some of time to gain momentum before the heavy lifting comes in.
- One thing at a time
Don’t overwhelm yourself. After everything you’ve been through the last thing you want to do is feel like another thing isn’t going to work out for you.
Break the dream down into small actionable steps. Don’t just divide it once, keep slicing it down until it’s simple and comfortable for you.
Do one thing at a time and focus on just that.
Don’t get caught up on something that you have to do later, it’ll only demotivate you. In the beginning, all the later steps seem troublesome because you haven’t even begun.
Once you get going things will start to make more sense and what you were once clueless about will be all sorted out due to what you’ve learned along the way.
How long have you been putting your dreams on hold?
