Dreams

-Devlyn Steele

As I start this inspiration, I am not sure if this is about going after your dreams, or lost dreams. Here we are already in March, time flies. All those ideas we had about a New Year and a new decade seem like a long time ago. We are back in our routines and instead of being enthusiastic about today, we are looking forward to better weather. We are no longer focused on losing weight, or quieting smoking or the other 100 promises we made to ourselves.

What happened to all great ideas we had about change?

What happened to our dreams?

As we were getting ready to enter this New Year it didn't matter if we declared resolutions or not, we still dreamed. We have had dreams our entire life about a better life. We have seen ourselves healthier, wealthier and happier. We traveled, loved and were loved while we had adventures in life. In our dreams, our bodies were in amazing shape and full of energy. We created success at work and had wealth. Dreams...

Go to a mirror and take a good look at yourself. What have you done differently in these last two months? The New Year began, January and February are history, and what is different in your life today? Did you follow through on any of your resolutions? Are you closer to your dreams?

I hear people consistently talk about the things they want to accomplish in their lives. We all want to lose weight, get in shape, make and save more money, get ahead, quit smoking and more....or do we?

Here is the dirty little secret about these broken promises: we don't really want to keep them. The real reason we don't accomplish our goals is because we don't do the work. We want things to simply "happen" for us just like in our dreams. Except that life doesn't work that way. There are no magic solutions, but dreams do come true.

Yes, dreams do come true. The reason why we don't do the work to make our dreams come true is because we don't dream the right way. We only dream a part of the story and that part is always the end.

Imagine you have a book in your hand. By the end of the book the character will have gotten through the obstacles and be in the place we want to see the character wind up in; however, we start at the beginning. We start at the beginning because we want to go through the struggle with the character. It is how the character deals with the journey that is interesting to us.

It is the struggle and the work that is always inspiring to us. We have shows on TV where people lose weight week by week. We don't want to skip all the weeks of work to just see them at a lesser weight with pictures of what they were before. We want to see them go through the challenge and adversities, it is their work that captures our attention.

There are shows where a love interest is picked. There again, we are not interested in watching a show of who they picked without the rest. We want to see the weeks go by and the good and bad connections, the disappointments, the pain and the joy. We want to see every part of the story.

A person's wealth or success is not very interesting by itself. The story becomes interesting when you hear that the person came from a tough situation and overcame it. Bill Gates and Steven Jobs not graduating college and how they made it and their struggles captures our imaginations. The founders of Google working out of a garage and stories of this nature are what we want to hear.

Henry Ford and his success is what we read about, not the generations after who followed, because how he created the success is more interesting to us than how someone continues it on. We don't walk in at the end of a movie, we want to see it all. Imagine watching Rocky standing up at the end of the fight and not all he went through to get there, would that be interesting to you?

However, when we dream for ourselves we dream ourselves in great shape, in love, with money....instantly. When it requires struggle, challenges, going through obstacles and hard work, we get disillusioned. We get disillusioned because we just dreamed the end story for ourselves and get frustrated when it doesn't happen like that.

Your character has a complete story to live, don't rob your character of the journey. Start living your dreams today and embrace the complete story. Just like we are not interested in end stories alone, we also would not want to watch the beginning of a story over and over. That is how we live our lives stuck at the beginning repeating it over and over.

Start dreaming in complete stories and start living your dreams today. As you go through your journey, all the parts are part of your dream, not just the end of the story. When you dream in complete stories you are living your dream every day and you are working towards creating the life changes you want. It is the struggles, how you get through the obstacles and the work that makes your life interesting. It is the journey and your willingness to move forward towards creating change that determines the quality of your life and your character. Start living your dreams today.

However, I have great news for you. If you decide to make positive changes in your life, you can! I have even better news, change can be very simple.

The first is this: make a commitment to put the effort into getting what you want. New Years' is not the only time you can make a resolution. Resolving to make a change is something you can do at any moment, so long as it is done with a commitment with real intention and determination.

Do not let another two months slip by! Two actions and two months from now you will be on your way to a new place in life.

Inspire someone you love...