We each hold within ourselves a picture of what our lives can be; what we want for our future. If we close our eyes and let our imaginations free, we can picture ourselves living our dreams. These dreams are powerful tools in painting our life’s masterpieces. But dreams don’t come true just because we wish for them. Our dreams can become a reality when we apply three basic practices.
Flesh out the Picture
Without the details that layer upon one another to create depth and texture to the portrait of a person, we would be left with little more than a stick figure. The same is true with our dreams. We need to fill in the details that will make them real in our minds. Jack Canfield suggests in his book, The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You are to Where You Want to Be, that we should define our dreams in terms of seven key areas. Identify what you want your life to look like in each area:
- Net worth: What is annual income? Do you have savings and investments? If so, how much and what types are they? What is your net worth? What types of assets do you have? A house? A car? What do they look like?
- Vocational: Where do you work? What type of work do you do? Who do you work for and with whom do you work? Who are your clients or customers?
- Personal Development: How will you continue to grow and develop your potential? Will you continue your education? Would you work with a life coach? What spiritual practices support your growth?
- Health: What are your long term health goals? How long will you live? What is your state of emotional and mental state of being? How fit are you? Do you work with a personal trainer? What about a nutritionist?
- Relational: What types of relationships fill your life? How are your relationships with your family? Who are your friends? How would you describe the quality of the relationships? What do you do with your friends and family?
- Recreational: What types of activities do you pursue in your free time? What hobbies do you engage in them? Where do you vacation? What do you do for fun?
- Community: What is the community like where you live? What type of community activities does it offer? How do the members support and help one another? How do you help others?
Build a Plan
No dream will come true just because we visualize it, no matter how detailed our portrait. We must create a plan. In building a plan, we will work backwards from the big picture gradually breaking it down into regularly steps we can take to make it a reality.
- We need to determine the time frame within which we want to accomplish each piece of our dream.
- Each piece of the dream will need certain actions to happen before the work of art is complete. What are those intermediate steps? When do they need to be completed in order to meet the dream timeline?
- Some of the intermediate steps may need to be broken down further. We will continue to breakdown the actions and assigning target dates until we have a step by step plan of action.
Act the Part
Acting the part is the final practice in creating a portrait of success. It incorporates two behaviors: work the plan and live the dream.
- Work the Plan: Each day we need to take the actions necessary to keep on track. Even small steps in the right direction are valuable and essential as each step works together to create the picture we hold in our minds.
- Live the Dream: This step is two-fold. We need to share our dream and our plan for achieving it with someone we trust and who can hold us accountable. We also need to behave and maintain the attitudes we would have if the dream was already a reality. Our minds are a powerful ally and when we create a differential between where we currently are and where we see ourselves by acting as if the dream were already a reality, our minds will become very creative in helping us to bring the two images into alignment.
We are all artists painting our lives. We may not choose the canvass upon which we paint. But if we – as Stephen R. Covey suggested in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, “start with the end in mind” – we can choose the outcome and paint a life that dreams are made of.