Some folks believe they have no dreams. They have buried their dreams for so long, they begin to believe they have none. The ability to dream is a gift from God. The ability to use our imagination and dream is one of the things that separate us from animals. At the deep recesses of our sub-conscious, our soul yearns for freedom. Freedom to achieve purpose and fulfill destiny. The yearning may be drowned by the present need to hold unto a job and earn money to put food on the table, and meet other survival needs.

Beyond survival, there is a realm where we experience the freedom to be who we were born to be. This desire is often expressed through dreams. The dream I am talking about here is not the variety that happens in the night, and dissipates at the rising of the morning sun. Although your dreams can manifest in the sleep state, I am talking about goals or things you would love to achieve, if your circumstances were different. You can create the circumstance you desire, but that is outside the scope of this article.

What is your dream?

Stop for a moment and think. If everything in life were free, without a price tag, where in the world would you be? What would you do on a normal working day?

If for a moment, you gain total control over your circumstances, what would you change about your life?

What are you tolerating currently, for the sake of a pay check, and food on the table?

Have you ever stopped and pondered if life was all about pay checks and bills?

Were you born to go to school, get a job, get married, send your kids to school, retire, live on your pension and wait for certain death…is that it? Is that the sum total of what life is about?

What is your dream?

Everybody has a God given dream. We all matter in the eternal master plan. To pursue a dream, you have to know what it is. If you have no clue, the best way to find out is to consult the dream maker .

You may have to go back to where you buried your dreams, dig it up and shake off the dust. You may have abandoned it a long time, believing you don’t have what it takes to make it happen. You will need to start believing in yourself. If you don’t have what it takes, God would not have bothered giving you the dream.

Discover your dreams, embrace it and run with it. The dreams of yesterday are the realities of today. Your tomorrow is in the making, today. Pursue your dreams.

You may have a dream of attaining financial freedom to go after your dreams, instead of doing what you have to do, to get bills paid and put food on the table. You think about it, dream about it, analyze it, attend seminars on it, read books on it, work out a plan to achieve it and all the works.

There comes a time you simply have to rise up and just do it. There is no better time than now. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is not a definite date, it may never come. If you continue analyzing and strategizing endlessly, you will become afflicted by a syndrome known as “analysis paralysis”.

After having done all, you have to start somewhere. There is something exhilarating, almost magical, about starting.

It engages your brain in forward gear. Like a ship leaving harbor, you cast off the rope, lift the anchor and set sail. Ship Ahoy!

The rudder is used to steer the ship. It is not of much use when the ship is in harbor. You can turn the rudder to your hearts content, you are not going anywhere. The ship has no room for maneuver. Likewise your plans are not of much use when you don’t put them to action.

As you start, all your faculties come alert. Your mind, drugged to a point of near stupor by years of overdose of TV programming comes back to life. You begin to think. Ideas begin to come to you. Actually, you have been getting them, but you never took notice. Your focus was somewhere else. You begin to use your brain to think, instead of storing garbage. As you put your thoughts into action, you begin to broaden your horizons.

One interesting thing about starting is that things may evolve in ways you never anticipated at the beginning. As you face new challenges, you discover that you may need to acquire new skills, and undertake tasks you never envisaged from the beginning. You learn new things, broaden your skills inventory and become better equipped to march on towards the field of your dreams.

Looking back, you see that you have gone quite from distance away from where you started. Looking forward, you see that you are getting closer to your destination, one step at a time. As you draw closer to shore, reality dawns on you that your dreams are possible after all. Nothing is impossible, if you put your mind to it. Impossible exists in the mind.

You have crossed many rivers, navigated round rapids and waterfalls and held on when many gave up and retreated back to status quo. As you hit the shore, you look back with a grateful heart. The secret to doing the impossible is to take a step, and stay focused.

Dreams can come true, if you believe they do. It starts with waking up, and doing something about it.

I spoke to a group of sharp young people not long ago, and when I finished, some of the fellows came up and said they were interested in becoming professional speakers. They invited me to go out with them that evening to have a good time. These fellows looked as though they knew how to have a serious good time.

I had planned to work on my delivery that night by listening to my tape of my speech. I tape my speeches and listen to them later so I can study what works and what does not work with a particular audience. In effect, I listen to the audience listening to me.

I was tempted to go with these fellows, and back when I was their age I probably would have given in to that temptation and gone. But I have become more disciplined and more committed to my craft. A friend of mine, Wes Smith, wrote a humor book called Welcome to the Real World, and in it he offered advice to fresh high-school and college graduates. He had a line in the book that pertains to the situation I faced that night. It said, “Having a drink with the boys after work every night is a bad idea. Notice that the boss doesn’t do it. That is why he is the boss and they are still the boys.”

Wes told me that he wrote that line with one particular group of hard-partying young businessmen in mind, and five years after the book came out, he ran into one of them. The guy volunteered that he’d read that line in Wes’s book and decided never to go drinking after work again. It paid off, he said. He had risen to a vice-presidency at a savings and loan.

In my drive to become a public speaker, I developed that kind of focus, too. There is not a lot of time for hard partying if you are pursuing greatness. It was not that these young fellows were not serious about their interest in professional speaking, but they were just as serious about having a good time. I don’t believe they were focused on their goals. They were seeking a profession but they were not on a mission to make a dramatic difference in the world. I am. You should be too.

Rather than the party crowd, I prefer to seek out people with knowledge that might be useful. I like to find out what books successful and intelligent people are reading. I want access to the information that contributes to their success and intelligence

Les Brown
http://www.lesbrown.com

How do you know what you are good at, if you don’t try? If you are so sure you will fail, then why not fail in style, by trying. If you try, you have a chance of making it. If you do not try, your chance of making it is zero.

There are odds, for and against, in every undertaking. What is the point rigging the odds against you, instead of going against the odds. By staying put, you have ensured that you do not make it. You did not make it, not because you failed, but because you failed to try.

Any time we contemplate stepping outside our comfort zone to go do something worth while, something that will impact the society positively, something we have been dreaming about doing, all our fears rear up their ugly heads.

We begin to simulate all manners of “what if” scenarios. Why dream up obstacles, real and imagined. We never stop to think that most of the things we are afraid of never come to pass.

We dwell on what we don’t want, rather than what we want. And since we dwell on what we don’t what, that is what usually happens…what we don’t want.

In life, nothing ventures, nothing wins. We increase the odds in our favor when we stand up and take a shot. We become better at it as we take more shots. We learn from our past mistakes and become better. Sometime soon, when opportunity meets with preparation, we get to take a clean shot at the bull’s eye.

Some folks complain of lack of opportunities. You can create one yourself, or be prepared for it when the next one shows up. If you are not prepared, you will not recognize one, right under your nose. It may come dressed in work clothes, and walk right by, while you keep looking.

You get to miss all the shots you don’t take. To increase your odds, gather up your courage, put away your fear and attempt something. It is better to fail at something, than to succeed at nothing

If you were guaranteed success, what would dare to attempt?

We all have dreams, deep inside…those moments when we take a voyage in our imagination, into a world where everything was possible. A world where fear is a strange concept, limits are non-existent and we are at peace with ourselves.

How come our dreams remain just that…dreams?

Why are we stuck in jobs we hate, held bound by the fear of the unknown, if we dare to stand up and walk away?

Every new day seems to take us farther away from our dream. Sometime we get so caught up in the rat race; our dreams seem like a distant memory. Little by little we let our dreams die.

How come our biggest dreams don’t come true?

The answer is not a profound revelation from the east, culled from wisdom of the ancients. It is so simple; you begin to wonder why it skipped you all these years.

Our dreams simply don’t come true because we keep on sleeping after dreaming. We don’t wake up, get out of bed, and do something about it.

The best dreams come to pass when you are awake…

Sometimes we actually wake up and take one giant leap for mankind. Then we plummet back to earth, lick our wounds, convince ourselves that it is not feasible, and promptly go back to sleep. Sometime we give it a second or third shot, before we say goodbye and return to status quo avenue. Well, we gave our best shot…

For some, we keep snoring away hoping that one day; we will awaken to a glorious dawn. Oh Happy day! We hope that a unique set of circumstances will propel us to the fulfillment of our dreams. We will simply happen to be at the right place at the right time, and the rest is history…

The only way our dreams can come true, is when we start doing something about it. Start with a baby step, one tiny step after another. With time, you will be amazed how far you had gone. The more steps you take in the direction of your dreams, the bolder you become. Soon you start seeing shafts of light at the end of the tunnel. The closer you get, the more feasible it becomes. Gradually, your fears begin to ebb away.

Taking the first step is scary business. You can determine the magnitude and direction of that first step. Some folks grab the bull by the horn, quit their day job, and go for it. Others keep their day jobs, and moonlight at sun down, till they get to the point they can comfortably fire their boss. For others still, it means a change of career.

Whichever route you take to the land of your dreams, the starting point is waking up, and doing something. Then keep on keeping on. It is only a matter of time. You will get there…

Most of us grew up without learning to take responsibility for our state of affairs. Somebody else but us is always to blame. We play the blame game. We blame our spouses, our bosses, the economy, government, fate, the devil and other factors for our plight.

We have dreams, but we don’t plan. When we manage to plan, we don’t execute it. Among the few that go on to execute their plans, most give up at the first setback. We have ready-made reasons for why events turned out contrary to our expectations. Most return to Status Quo Boulevard and Grumble-Ville.

By refusing to take responsibility for your situation, you invariably transfer that responsibility to someone else to solve our problems. It is not our responsibility to fix it. It is someone else’s. We wait and wait. We wait for the solution to come to us, instead of actively seeking it out. We become reactive, instead of proactive.

You are perpetually at Broke-Ville, always out of pocket for instance. Your take home pay abandons you midway in the month. You live paycheck to paycheck. In your subconscious, it is not your fault. It is your boss that refused to give you a promotion or a raise. It is the bad economy, inflation, high interest rates, oil prices or politicians. It is never your fault.

How will your situation improve? Well, since it is not your fault, the other guys have to do something. Pay raise, promotion, falling interest rates, low oil prices, lower bills, tax cuts, debt forgiveness etc. If all fails, win the lottery! All you need is for fate to deal you the right cards, and then your dreams will come true. It will get better, one day for sure…

It is natural to avoid responsibility. However, the tragedy is that when we refuse to take responsibility, we hand over our lives to others and chance. When we start taking responsibility, we begin doing something about it, like controlling our finances, creating multiple streams of income, networking, developing ourselves and moving towards the fulfillment of our dreams.

In any economy, you always have those that get bruised and battered by the vagaries of the economy, and those that rise no matter the general outlook. There are always risers and fallers, winners and losers; it has nothing to do with the whole system, but individual scenarios. It is the sum total of the individual scenarios that paint the picture of the entire economy.

Let’s use the stock market as an illustration. Everyday at the floor of the exchange, prices of some stocks rise while others fall or remain the same. The index gives a total picture of what is going on. If the index rises, it means that the risers (bulls) are stronger than the fallers (bears). The same way, if the index is going down, it means the bears have taken center stage. This is a rather simplistic illustration, as not all companies in the exchange have equal contribution to the overall index.

So every day, some stock prices rise, while some fall. The interplay between the bulls and the bears gives the direction of the overall index, rising or falling. It does not mean that one day, all stock prices crash, and next day, they start climbing. Of course a bear market might trigger gloom, which may force rising stocks to dip, but that does not mean that all stock prices go the same direction.

Hence, blaming the economy for example is being escapist. Everyday, a millionaire is being made. We have to take responsibility and choose which camp we belong, winners or losers, bears or bulls. We cannot afford to leave that responsibility to circumstances, time and chance. We are wholly to blame for where we are right now. Our current position is a resultant of past decisions we made. Our future is being fashioned today.

I know lots of folks that would like to start a business. Each time I ask them why they have not started, I always get the same answer; lack of start up capital. They need that much money, but there is no one to borrow from, friend or foe, the banks are impossible etc. End of story. They leave it right there. It is not their fault that they have not started. It is always an uphill task to persuade them that money is an idea. The answer lies within them. There are many roads to Rome. There are many options on how to start a business without mega bucks. The limit is your imagination.

We cannot blame past abuses, color of our skin, bad luck and a whole lot of other things for where we are right now. How we respond to whatever adversity we face is our full responsibility. What we went through is not an excuse for doing the wrong things. We cannot do all the wrong things and blame the system for our lack of progress. The system did not make you do it, you did. The system did not shut down your brain, you did.

If we keep blaming external circumstances, we will find ourselves stuck in a rut, and going downhill. Pause for a moment and take a good look around. You will find out that others in the same situation have moved on. What seems to be your obstacle has become a stepping-stone to others. Success is the best revenge. Adverse circumstances should provoke us to greater heights, not drown us in depths of self-pity. Our attitude and outlook determines whether adverse circumstances make us better or bitter.

Life is not fair, it never has been, it will never will be. Nobody said it was. In life, you don’t get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate for. Instead of whining at the cards life dealt you, work hard, keep playing till an ace turns up and then make very good use of it. Mother luck smiles at those who work hard, and are ready to grab opportunities when they present themselves.

It starts with taking responsibility. Responsibility for our actions, responses and inactions… If someone makes a derogatory remark about you, you have many choices. Curse back, smile and walk away, go ballistic etc. The other party cannot force you to become upset, you choose to.

Our choices determine whether our dreams will come true or not. Lets choose to take responsibility for our lives. Accept past mistakes, deal with it and move on. You are the reason you are jobless. You are the reason you are broke. You are the reason you are still stuck in the rat race. You are the reason you have not started that project or business. You are the reason your dreams have become a mirage. You are the man! Look no further.

Become pro-active. Get to work. Dream again. Study, plan and execute. Before long, you will find out that you are far away from where you started. It starts by taking responsibility.

I believe there is a third group as well. This consists of potential winners whose lives are just slightly out of alignment. I call them wayward winners. It may be that they just need to learn how to be real winners. Perhaps they’ve hit a bump or two that has knocked them off course and they are temporarily befuddled. A failed relationship, a lost job, financial problems, unformed goals, a lack of parental support, illness, many things can send us off course temporarily.

Wayward winners are not lost souls; they just need some tweaking and coaching and nudging to get them back on course. A map might be nice. Many of these wayward winners are easily identifiable because they are always searching.

Right now, there are many wayward winners out there braving rain, sleet and snow because they too still believe that they have untapped talents. They attend motivational seminars and listen to inspirational tapes and they plunge onward, believing that sooner or later they will find their way again.

Other wayward winners have temporarily given up. They are damaged and disoriented, their confidence badly eroded. They tend to drift through life numbly.

The friends and relatives and loved ones of wayward winners see that they are out of sync and wonder why they can’t be satisfied, why they don’t settle down. They wonder how people who have such obvious abilities and great potential can be so disoriented and unsure.

It is difficult for others to understand the rawness of a broken heart or the aching emptiness of an unguided spirit. You and I know. We have been there. Wayward winners know that there are possibilities out there, but too often they feel locked out from them. Some are afraid to risk any more because of what they have risked and lost already.

I know now that as difficult as it may be for you wayward winners to do, it is necessary to continue to test yourselves. Even though you have been hurt before, it is the only way to grow. We all have the capacity to change, to lead meaningful and productive lives by awakening our consciousness.

You know there are going to be tough times as you go about changing your life, so brace yourself and you will be able to handle them. When you get into your seat on an airplane, what is the first thing they tell you to do? Fasten your seat belt. Brace yourself for the turbulence.

When you decide to move your life to the next level of accomplishment, you must fasten your mental and spiritual seat belts because it is going to be a while before you reach that comfortable level again. You will reach it, but you must endure the turbulence of change in order to grow.

Try this technique to help you through the difficult times of change and growth. Find four reasons why you cannot succumb to your fears and your troubles. Find those deep sources of motivation that can lift you out of the turbulence and above the clouds. You must change your life because, for example:

· You have not yet tapped the talents given you.
· You want to leave something more for your children.
· You want to live life rather than letting life live you.
· You want to do what makes YOU happy.

It is in these rocky early moments of bringing change to your life that you discover who you are. In the prosperous times, you build what is in your pocket. In the tough times, you strengthen what is in your heart. And that is when you gain insight into yourself, insight that leads to self-mastery and an expansion of your consciousness as a life-force in both your personal and professional lives.

Les Brown
http://www.lesbrown.com

The fear of failure makes failure loom larger than life. We hardly ever ponder over what failure is, and how to deal with it. Like death, we all know failure exists, but it is a subject we rather not talk about, or contemplate. It is a situation we wish was not part of life.

Failure: falling short, lack of success, bankruptcy.

Failure means many things to many people. For some, it is a temporary set back. For others, it is the end of the road, terminal.

How you look at failure will determine how you respond to it. If you think it is all over, for you it is. You get to decide when to give up. You get to decide whether it is all over, or you will give it another shot.

In a boxing match, there are time limits. When the final bell goes, it is all over. It the journey to your dream, there are no time limits except you drop dead. If you die, it is all over. Time up. If you are still alive, it is not over until you say so. You call the shots.

If failure is not terminal. It is a temporary setback. You simply fell short. Big deal, give it another shot. There are no limits to the maximum number of shots allowed. You decide when to quit. Nobody makes that decision for you.

If you have any worthwhile goal, you are sure to face setbacks. If is not a matter of if, but when…

You sure will encounter a setback. It then makes sense to prepare for it, make provisions for it, have a back-up plan or disaster recovery plan. Most of the preparation is mental.

If you know that setbacks surely will come, you will not be scared off your wits when they do show up. You will be ready. Your back-up plan will kick in. if you have none, then you will be swept off your fit.

Imagine for a moment, the TV reality show “Survivors”. The entrants are told upfront the perils they are going to face. They are aware of the water, snakes, crocodiles and the works waiting for them. They expect them to show up anytime. They are not dazed when that happens. They are aware of the dangers, but they still go for it. Maybe for the prize money, maybe for kicks I don’t know. But they feel it worthwhile to still press on after being made aware of the odds.

In our life reality show, we bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best. We don’t prepare for the water, snakes, crocodiles and co. We either sit petrified, unable to enter the water, or we jump in unprepared. When the crocs show up, we scream and run for dear life back to the shore.

Setbacks are one of the major the obstacles we will face in this journey. Like a good football coach, we have to study the opponent, and make plans to contain them. If you are aware of the odds, and you prepare adequately for them, you will feel confident. You will not fear it anymore. It will not take it by surprise. And when it does show up, you will go “Oh there you are…”

I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar:

“Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once:
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end
Will come, when it will come.”

We can monitor what we are becoming, making adjustments as we go. But the true wealth in success is the lessons we learn as we get there. If you keep a journal of those lessons, you can look back on them often. Not only will you achieve your goals when you are mindful of these life’s lessons, but you will become a better person for it.

On my journey, I have found that I can do a lot more than I thought I could. I have also learnt that I am not as “tough” as I’d like to believe! I have weaknesses to work on, and that keeps us human, needing God.

Another exciting thing I learned, as I journeyed towards weight-loss, is that nothing is impossible! We all “know” that, but I experienced it in an area that is personal to me. Achieving and sustaining a goal that many others find impossible or not likely, has taught me lot about life: If no one’s ever done it before, there can always be a first time, and the first person could always be you!

I lost weight fast, and it’s been permanent, because I took the time to find out how it works, then I “got with the program!” Most people don’t know how things work, how to get what they want, and couldn’t be bothered to find out. The few that know how are too lazy to follow through.
When friends ask me how I stay in shape, and I tell them of my (grueling, but fun) workout sessions, and of the foods I now “forbid” (junk items, really), they run away! They’d much rather have a magic potion, and a fairy godmother do it for them!

Every thing has a price, a map, a system. Even salvation does! Whether it’s wealth building, or relationship building, an education or a transformation, succeeding as a writer or a speaker, there is a route to it. And if we find the route, and take it, we’ll get there!

Knowing that the journey is more important than the destination gives me strength when things look rough.
It’s like the grueling workouts! When I’m sweating it out, I encourage myself with a look in the mirror!

At this stage, the quitters quit.
The prize isn’t a big enough incentive for them.

© 2005 Oma Edoja Oma Edoja is a published writer, motivational speaker
and infopreneur. She is the editor of several blogs,
including http://omaslounge.blogspot.com

http://theparentingmix.blogspot.com

Some folks believe dreams do come true. Dreams do actually come true, if you believe they do. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, in this group are those that believe that their dreams will come true somehow, some day. Tomorrow takes on a magical quality. A day where all your troubles will be over, all your prayers answered. They don’t need to lift up a finger and do anything. By some stroke of fate, or a chain of events orchestrated by providence, their dreams will simply come to pass. All they need to do is hope, and pray.

Still within this group exists a pragmatic minority, who dream, and do something about it. Most dreams come to pass when you are awake. That is, you roll up your sleeve and do something about it.

Why are your dreams still a mirage? It is because you are still asleep. If you remain sleeping, your dreams can only come to pass in the land of nod. It vaporizes with the rising of the morning sun. What stares back at you when you awake is your good old everyday reality.

The best way to get to the filed of your dreams is to have a plan, and implement it. A plan is the bridge to your dreams. A lot depends on where you are heading, but one thing is universal. Wherever you are headed, the best way to get there is to get your but off the sofa and start heading there, one step at a time.

The dream is yours. You are not in a race. You can take it at your pace, one little step after the other. The most important thing is to start, and keep moving.

“If you cannot fly, run
if you cannot run, walk
if you cannot walk, crawl
by all means, keep moving”

Martin Luther King Jnr.

There is something almost magical about commencing the journey to your dreams. Each day, you start getting closer to where you are heading, and farther away from where you started. It begins to look do-able. It is a heady feeling. Small successes along the way spur you on. With focus and persistence, you rise up each time you fall. Before long, streaks of light will begin to appear at the end of the tunnel. Midnight is over, overtaken by the dawning of a bright new day. The finish line looms into view. With a fresh burst of strength, you hit the home run.

Dreams do come true. All you need to do is, wake up, clear your eyes, work out a plan, and just do it. When you are well on your way, it is no longer a matter of if, but when. You will get there…

Bon voyage.