Fuel Your Dreams, Thoughts and Actions With This!

Each of us has the God-given capacity to do three things—to dream, to think, and to act. And every one of us have different natural abilities and interests. The history of American business is replete with stories of ordinary people who rose from less than ideal backgrounds to achieve great things. How did they do it? They discovered what they were interested in and had the ability to do, and then they dared to dream about where these things could take them if they were brought together in the right way.

A name we are all familiar with is J.C. Penney. Talk about having few if any connections, Penney was the son of a preacher who grew up in humble circumstances. According to a television program that I watched he got his start in a small store in a small town out west. But Penney wasn’t content to just be a small town merchant. He dared to let himself dream of someday having a chain of stores that stretched across the entire country. He didn’t run out and find a venture capitalist to raise millions of dollars to make his dream an overnight reality. Instead he found ways to leverage his knowledge and abilities in such a way as to build his dream one store at a time.

J.L. Kraft, founder of what became Kraft Foods is another example of a man who discovered what he had a knack for doing and dared to dream. Others include R. H. Macy (Macy’s department stores), Sam Walton (Wal-Mart), Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, the list is endless. All of these people, and countless others became successful because they discovered their passion and allowed their dream to flow out of it.

To be attainable your dream must flow out of your interests, abilities and passion because these are the foundation stones you must use to begin turning your dream into a reality. Maybe that’s why so many people give up on the idea of goal setting based on their dreams. Instead of letting their dreams (which shape their goals) flow from their passion, they begin with something incompatible with their real passion. I once heard such a person say, “I put my silly dreams in a box and locked them into a closet because I’ve decided I’m just one of life’s losers…”

That is a sad (and hopefully extreme) commentary on ones own life. Since I was acquainted with this person, I knew that the dream he had struggled to attain for years was totally incompatible with his abilities and his interests. Had he followed the considerable talents he had in other fields of endeavor I have no doubt but what he would have been successful (and probably an advocate of both daring to dream big dreams and goal setting).

Another mistake people make is setting goals without a dream behind it, much less any idea of how to begin working toward it. This goal may be simply to “be somebody important” or “I want to be a multi-millionaire by the time I’m forty.” When goals lack the foundation of flowing from dreams based on interests, abilities and passion the result is the individual is constantly casting about for a vehicle to move them toward their objective. They often drift from job to job, deal to deal, place to place, and eventually become disillusioned and then give up.

The capacity to dream is important, but more important is our ability to think about what we have the interest and ability to do (our passion) and how to leverage it as a vehicle toward attaining our dream. When our dream is mentally tested in the fires of our passion it becomes refined, re-defined and sharpened to the point where we begin to think creatively about what we are capable of achieving and the actions required to turn dreams into realities.

When your dream doesn’t flow out of your passion you are like a person who has grown up eating only pinto beans and cornbread. Since you’ve never eaten a meal away from home, you are totally unaware of the variety of food choices available to you. Then one day you become hungry and instead of going home for more beans and cornbread you stop at a restaurant. You are amazed at the wide-variety of foods available and suddenly a whole new and exciting world opens up for you. Like our liberated beans and corn bread eater, once your dreams flow out of your passion you will be amazed at the new world of opportunities that you discover.

People who discover their passion and let their dreams flow from them become energized by the possibilities they see. Their minds become alert as they constantly filter exciting ideas, and their personality takes on a sense of vibrancy and confidence as they move to make their dream a reality.

So let your dreams flow out of your passion
and Have A Great and Profitable Week!
Robert Hidde
bob@confidentliving.com