Getting Practical with Your Dreams

There are two main components of helping people work happier and live happier.  Phase one is dream big.   I absolutely love helping people unearth their dreams, passions and somedays.  If you have been reading my blog you know I believe we need a little more dream validation, we need to be engaging in the things that make us come alive, and we need to have curiosity and awareness around what makes our heart sing.  Phase Two is taking those big beautiful dreams and developing practical steps to add them into our every day lives.  Although, dreaming is a lost art and it is a key to working and living happier, it means nothing if we can't implement our dreams into our daily lives.  We may have the biggest dreams, ideas, passions imaginable but if we can't figure out practical ways to live them they are useless to us.

I admit, these practical steps may mean our dream has to change or be different then we might imagine.  We might have to make compromises due to timing or have a little more patience. But the truth is, our dreams are accomplishable we just need to add them into our lives in practical, step by step ways.   A friend of mine's unspoken dream is that he has always wanted to be a sportscaster, he LOVES sports of all kinds and is a wealth of information when it comes to factoids and numbers related to sports.  However, he has 3 kids, lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere and has limited connections to the sporting world.  He doesn't even know where to begin to accomplish this dream.  Sounds pretty hopeless huh?  But in reality, right now, he wants to be home with his children, he doesn't want to be traveling from game to game and missing the time he currently has with his family.  So right now going after his dream full tilt, probably not going to mesh with his current values.  But that doesn't mean his dream has to die.  We just need to get creative with his dream so we can combine his current values and his dream of being a sportscaster. 

 First step is to get crystal clear on what he LIKES about the idea of being a sportscaster--is it sharing his love/knowledge of sports? or being able to watch as many sporting events as possible and get paid for it? or does he simply want to be famous? Once we have that answer then we can come up with some ideas:   For example, he can write articles on-line or magazines/newspapers and get some free-lance work going, he could announce local games in his area,  he can work for a local radio show or do a podcast around certain sporting events, or he could start building contacts with people in the sports industry so when his children are grown he can be ready to really go after the big dream. 

The idea is that your dream is your focus point then you need to break down your dream step by step.  What is it about the dream that really makes your heart sing? How can you start adding that into your life now? What are some practical steps you can start to make that dream a reality based on your current lifestyle/values?  One thing we know for sure, time keeps moving, and we keep getting older. For many of us our dreams in their entirety might not be achievable right now, in this moment, but if we don't start working towards them, if we don't take the first step and start walking towards our dreams we won't achieve them.  Nothing is more sad to me than an unexplored dream, a dream that was pushed aside, forgotten or ignored.  We owe it to ourselves, and our loved ones to both dream big AND implement those dreams, one step at a time.