There are many reasons why you should follow your dreams. Your life becomes much more meaningful when you pursue a bigger vision. You’ll feel more motivated to wake up. And it fills your life with much more happiness.
Most people wake up and snooze the alarm a couple of times. They feel unmotivated to go back to work and only do so because it pays the bills.
We spend about 1/3rd of our waking hours at work.
Isn’t that a good reason to at least make sure you do work that’s meaningful to you? Work that helps you towards a bigger dream?
Of course, it is.
But even if you’re following dreams, it’s not always going to be easy.
And in this article, we will go over the basic yet important building blocks to turn your dream into a reality.
Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Gain Clarity
Most people’s dreams are quite vague. For example, they say something like: “I want to have more freedom.” Or something like: “I want more money.”
The problem is that it’s not specific. And if it’s not specific, it’s not exciting.
A much better dream would be to explore different cities around the world. Or to climb the 7 summits in the world. Or to take a 2-months break every year and go skïing.
If you want more money, ask yourself what for? What do you want to do with all the money? Do you want to buy a sports car or a bigger house? Do you want to treat yourself to a weekly massage?
The more specific you get with what you want, the more exciting you become to go after it.
Then, ask yourself why it’s important to you.
The issue with most people’s dreams is that it’s a copy of someone else’s dream. Often the idea of traveling or a big car sounds great, but is it also great for you?
The more truthful you’re to yourself and your needs, the better. Not only does it help you to focus, but it also ensures that you’re enjoying the rewards when you achieve your dreams.
To sum it up, you’ve two simple questions to ask.
- What is your dream – specifically?
- Why is it important to you?
Step 2: Start Believing
Too often people give up before they’ve even started. And that’s a shame.
Following your dreams isn’t only for the fortunate.
Yet, most people don’t believe it’s possible. Somehow, the world puts a voice inside of them that tells them it’s only for those who get lucky. Or whatever else that voice tells you.
But that’s rubbish.
Following your dreams is something anyone can do and something everyone should do. Sure, that means you might also fail, which is scary.
But what’s the cost of not going after your dreams? Regret?
Besides, your everyday life becomes much more joyful when you follow your dreams. Your work becomes more meaningful. And life becomes more joyful.
Are you convinced?
Then here’s another trap you want to watch out for. A trap that destroys many beliefs. And that’s the trap of time.
You see, most people overestimate what they can get done in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.
Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
– Bill Gates
Yet, we live in a short-term results-oriented society. If we don’t see results within a week, we tend to give up. Humans are very bad at conceptualizing time with disastrous consequences for our happiness.
Here are some tips to help you start believing in yourself:
- Think long-term; what can you achieve in 10 years?
- Surround yourself with positive people who encourage your dreams
- Consume more content that inspires you to go after your dreams
- Learn from and become inspired by someone who is already living your dreams
Step 3: Seek Guidance
The internet is a wonderful thing. It makes every piece of information available to you. You can easily find people who are living the life you want to live and mimic them.
Find the people who are living your ideal lifestyle. And then find out how they realized that. Did they develop specific skills? What does their day look like?
The more people you find, the better you get an idea of what’s needed to succeed in your dreams.
For example, say you want to travel around the world. And you want to do it in a pretty slow way, so you can enjoy every place for a week or longer.
Many people do this.
And when you observe those people, you notice that most of them haven’t saved up a lot of money to fund this dream. Instead, most of them have a specific set of skills that allows them to work remotely.
That’s already a pretty good takeaway.
The next thing is to find out all the possible skills that allow you to work remotely. And from that list of skills, you can find the one that suits your strengths and interests.
That’s just one example of how you can seek guidance.
Find someone who is already living your dreams. And then learn everything about the process that got them there.
Since there is more than one way to Rome, it’s always good to find many people who live your preferred lifestyle. Look for commonalities to see what works consistently. And then pick the thing that works best for you.
Step 4: Create a Plan
Imagine that you’re in the special forces and are being dropped in enemy territory to rescue a hostage. But there’s no plan for after the dropping.
That wouldn’t give you much confidence about the mission, would it?
A dream without a plan never becomes much more than a dream. If you want to follow your dreams, you must create and follow a specific plan.
In the previous step, you should’ve gained some insight into what others did. Based on what you’ve learned, try to set up a plan for yourself.
A good plan is very specific and includes both long-term and short-term goals.
The long-term should focus on the big target you want to hit. Long-term goals are both exciting and scary. The reason is that these targets often feel slightly outside your comfort zone.
Short-term goals feel more attainable and motivate you to take action.
Keep in mind what we’ve discussed before: we’re not good at grasping the concept of time.
What that means is that if you have the skills that earn you 40K per year and no money saved up, it’s unlikely that you become a millionaire next week. However, with the right plan, a lot is possible in a 10 or 20 year period.
When you’ve got a plan, you increase your chances of success.
Don’t worry about having the perfect plan. What matters is that you have a plan that gives you a clear direction and helps you to stay consistent.
Step 5: Take Massive Action
When it comes to realizing your dreams, the secret of success lies in the amount of action you take.
You see, so far you’ve done the fun stuff. We feel inspired by looking at other people who live our dreams. A smaller portion of people set out goals for themselves.
But almost no one takes action.
Not even to speak about massive action. At this point, most people drop the ball.
The most common reason why people don’t take action is that they don’t feel ready. Instead, they keep reading more books and watching more YouTube videos.
It’s one of the most common traps in the personal development space.
Though you feel like you’re making progress by learning more and more, only taking action will move you forward.
Look, you won’t feel 100% ready.
And the fastest way to build your confidence in that area is through massive action. Taking action is much more important than getting everything perfect.
It’s paradoxical, right?
You need the confidence to take action, yet you only gain that confidence through action.
Funny how life works sometimes…
Once you do take action, be careful to not fall into the common trap of setting the wrong expectation. I’ve already mentioned this but people overestimate what they can do in a year.
And when they don’t see the desired results within 2 months, they give up.
If you want lasting success, focus on the long term. And learn to take imperfect action if you want to realize your dreams.
Step 6: Track Progress
Tracking your progress is one of the most important elements of success.
What gets measured, gets managed.
– Peter Drucker
When you review your goals often and track your progress, the easier you’ll find it to stay on track. Doing so helps you to stay more focused and consistent.
Weight loss is a great example of this.
If your goal is to lose weight, you want to eat fewer calories and more high-quality foods. That’s quite easy to do at first. But after a short while, it becomes more difficult.
You may ask yourself, how bad can a little snack be?
Well, you find out if you measure it.
Those who are serious about weight loss, keep track of their daily intake. And this highly increases your chances to successfully drop weight.
The reason is awareness. When you track your goals, you know what’s going on. And you also find out that some foods might have contained a few more calories than expected. Oops…
Track progress if you want success.
Because this doesn’t only count for weight loss. Keeping track of your progress and goals is a great way to keep yourself accountable and stay on track. It improves your focus and helps you to stay consistent.
Step 7: Adjust If Necessary
Most people either give up too soon or get completely stuck in their ways.
When you take action on your plan, you want to give it enough time. Don’t throw your towel in the ring after two months without seeing results. On the flip side, you might want to change your plan if you’ve been taking action for 10 years without the results.
Find the sweet spot.
It’s hard to tell where that sweet spot lies because it depends on many factors. Including the amount of action you’ve taken and the stuff that you’re after. Some goals need more time than others.
But if you keep track of your progress, you’ll find what that sweet spot is for what you’re doing.
Like I said before, tracking your progress gives you awareness. And that awareness helps you to better judge when you need to change your approach.
Step 8: Have Fun
Having fun is a key factor for success.
If you only pursue something for the results and don’t enjoy the process, you’re in a long uphill battle. Without joy, it’s hard to stay consistent in your actions.
Achieving your dream is the ultimate goal.
But making the journey joyful is just as important – if not more important. Success takes time, effort, and consistent action. And having fun increases your odds of sticking to those simple principles.
Find something that you enjoy and focus on long-term success.
That’s maybe not the advice you want to hear. It’s certainly not popular in our fast-paced society. How fast you achieve success seems a much more popular measurement for most people.
And that’s why most people give up.
After all, shouldn’t your happiness get some consideration in the equation for success?
Shouldn’t the ride be just as fun as the final destination?
Some questions to think about.
Final Words on Following Dreams
By now I hope that you’ve got a good idea of the simple steps that you need to take to follow your dreams. But although the steps are simple, it ain’t easy.
How high your chances are to succeed, comes down to how well you execute on each of those steps.
Here are the key points discussed:
- Get specific about what your dream is and why you want to achieve it.
- Learn from those who’re already living your ideal life.
- Create a plan and follow that up with massive action.
- Track your progress and adjust if necessary.
- And make sure you enjoy the process.
Or if you only want to remember the bare minimum, it would be this: have a long-term plan and take consistent action.
To help you further, check out some of the following resources: