FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS AND SEE WHERE IT TAKES YOU
Follow your dream, I’m sure you’ve heard this plenty of times, however, if others have accomplished things so can you. It requires commitment, reflection, and tenacity as well as breaking your dream into some small actionable tasks. Figuring out how to manifest your dreams will be stressful but worth it so you won’t have any regrets later.
15 Ways To Follow Your Dreams
1. What Makes You Happy?
Happiness is a relative term but it’s also a choice. A person can choose to focus on negative or positive things but meaning and fulfillment are the foundation of happiness. Make a happy list.
HAPPY LIST:
- Animals
- Food
- A good movie
- Hanging out with friends
- Running
This will help you start focusing on the positive things in life. Remove any negative thoughts or other people’s opinions from your mind this is only about you. Don’t allow yourself to feel limited by your current circumstances, dream big. Some dreams may need to be reworked depending on your age, health, and industry changes.
2. Create a Mission Statement
Creating a personal mission statement will give you a sense of purpose and direction. After you’ve made your personal mission statement, post it somewhere where you can see it every day so that it gives you the motivation to follow your dreams.
3. Re-examine Past Goals
If you tried to follow your dreams in the past and failed, sit down and reflect on what went wrong. Release the feelings of shame, and regret, and concentrate on new strategies. This may be hard to do because we like to beat ourselves up when we make mistakes. But, we learn/grow by making mistakes or having failures. Reflection creates clarity and new ideas which can lead to new opportunities. Revisiting the past will remind you of lessons forgotten which may come in handy especially if you are repeating those mistakes.
4. Create a vision board
Dreams can come to life in a visual way through a vision board. These are fun to create, use a large poster board, glue, and old magazines. It’s basically a collage of pictures that represent your future life. Be sure to add a few words under each image such as a deadline or a quote that gives you encouragement. Make sure that you choose images that take you out of your comfort zone. Remember, comfort zones are the killer of dreams, they make us lazy and cause us to settle for misery.
5. Release Control
There are just some things that you cannot control especially the actions of others who might get in your way. Additionally, you can’t control how long it takes to get what you want. Some goals can happen fast while others take time. So you must be patient because your dream is worth the wait.
If unforeseen circumstances stand in your way, look for practical solutions. Life is all about problem-solving, you’ll find solutions by asking yourself questions.
Questions:
- Why is this important to me?
- Can it be done in a different way?
- Who can help me make this happen?
- Is this what I should be focusing on right now?
Following your dreams takes time so avoid being discouraged by small matters and keep your focus on the path ahead.
6. Write Manageable Goals
Now that you have created a mission statement and vision board, it is now time to craft some goals from what you’ve learned so far. For example, you should create a big goal
that stems from your mission statement objective. This goal should be written down somewhere that is visible daily.
Then create 3 small goals that will move you toward your big goal that can be completed quickly.
7. Break down Your Goal
In most cases, achieving your dream will require you to learn new knowledge or skills. In some cases, you can hire people to do the things you are not good at. This will move you closer to your dream faster. Small parts allow you to complete tasks quickly which will create momentum and that will give you the courage to keep moving forward.
8. Find Others
Do some research to find people who’ve achieved the dream you want to see how they did it. Identify the top person and copy their steps to get the same results. If he or she has an autobiography read it, watch interviews, and read their articles.
9. Create Milestones
It’s not easy to achieve your dreams so creating milestones helps you measure your progress. We can get off track easily by doing things that keep us busy with things that aren’t related to our big dream. Setting up milestones related to your progress it will keep you on track. The first milestone should be after you’ve completed 6 small goals, this will set you up for success.
10. Define Each Step
For each project/goal, define the steps you are going to follow in order to make it happen. For example, if you are writing an ebook in order to help you start an online business (ultimate goal), why do you think it is necessary and who has used this method before. Then write down each chapter and define how it will add value to your defined audience.
11. Take Action
Since you have already broken down your dreams into achievable projects/goals, you can start working on one project per day. If you want to work on multiple projects you should break them up into days so you can focus on one at a time. Keep moving forward even if you are just making small steps because that is the only way of staying motivated. Don’t overload yourself, it will overwhelm you, and eventually, it could cause you to give up.
12. Maintain a List
It is vital to keep a list of the goals/milestones that you’ve completed. This will remind you how far you’ve come and keep you motivated as your goals become more challenging the closer you get to your Ultimate Goal.
13. Manage Time
Life is busy especially if you have a full-time job and family but make sure you devote some time every week to your dream. An hour a day will give you the momentum you need to see progress and keep you moving forward. Also, it’s not necessary to share your dream unless you’re certain that people around you will be supportive.
14. Always Be Learning
You will make mistakes, instead of giving up, learn from them and readjust or change the goal. Life is all about lessons but you will repeat the ones you do not learn from. Do a history check on your life to see if you repeated a mistake more than once. What are the outcome/consequences the same?
15. Be Inspired
Talk to people, watch interviews, listen to podcasts of those who’ve made it, and get inspired. You can also get inspiration from reading books, watching documentaries, attending conferences, and getting a mentor.
In Conclusion
Believing in yourself is the only way to make your dreams come true. I know it’s a cliche, but most cliches are based on reality left behind by our ancestors.
Want More: 7 Ways to Set Goals and Crush Them Every Day
