‘How to achieve your dreams’
Urgh. Yeah I heard it too.
The black-and-white, analytic nature of my personality has my eyes rolling at the mere thought of that sentence.
But imagine if we could actually add a bit of substance to that. What if I could show you a way of increasing the odds of achieving your dreams, with a few practical things that were devoid of Mystic-Meg language?
Interested?
Let’s get going.
Ok, firstly, what do I mean by ‘dream’? I don’t mean the subconscious thoughts we unintentionally experience as we enter the latter REM stages of our sleep. I mean the things that we’ve always wanted to achieve, our deepest desires.
Want to know what your dreams are? Complete these sentences out loud:
One day, I’d love to…
I’ve always wanted to…
When I have more time/energy/money/health, I’m going to…
Ta-da. May I present to you, your dreams…
I thought for a long time that dreams are just bad goals. Goals without a timeframe. Goals that aren’t written down. The poor relation to goals.
I’ve changed my viewpoint now.
See goals get into the nitty-gritty specifics of what you want to do.
They’re purposeful, thought-through, and ideally meet a certain criteria to be a ‘good’ goal. But I doubt you would sit round a campfire late at night with your mates, or go out for a long walk with a close friend and talk about how you can’t wait to write down and achieve your next SMART goal.
You would talk about your dreams though. You would talk about what you’d love to, what you’d love your life to be filled with, what your life would look like in an ideal world.
It’s authentic, genuine. It’s from your soul, from the very identity of who you are.
And it’s from this place that goals should be created.
Otherwise you start creating goals you don’t give two stuffs about. “Lose 10lb,” “Eat healthier,” “Read more,” blah, blah, blah. Socially acceptable goals that you don’t really care about.
Then you wonder how you wake up at 28/37/46/52 years old (Like how I avoided the classic 30/40/50 ‘multiples of 10’ years-old there?) and wonder how your life ended up in the place it did? It’s not that your life is terrible, it’s just not what you expected, nor is it what you dreamt about yesteryear…
I’d like to give you an analogy to help explain this. And to start with I’d like to ask you a question:
What are the steps you’d need to take to go on your dream holiday?
Now, there are many things you would need to do. Pack, choose a destination, decide who you’re going with, travel to the airport, buy insurance, sort someone to look after your pets etc. Hopefully not in that order…
The main three areas would be: Choose a destination, decide on the specifics, complete the mini to-dos.
Firstly, you choose a destination. You can do all the organising in the world, but if you turn up to the airport and say, “Don’t mind where I go, first plane ticket out of here please,” You might end up in the Seychelles. Or you might end up in Luton. No offence intended towards the residents of Luton; it’s just probably not most people’s first choice of dream holiday destination.
You have to choose where you want the plane to head towards.
Then you need the specifics. This is like the boarding pass. It might say: Where you’re going, who you’re going with, the airport to depart from, the date and time you’re departing, perhaps how much it cost. You need the specifics to make the holiday happen – choosing a destination by itself won’t get you there.
Lastly, you need to do the practical mini tasks: Insurance, pack, arrange transport, buy new flipflops as your favorite pair broke last summer. The small, seemingly insignificant tasks. But they’re vital. Again, choosing a destination and holding a boarding pass in your hands by itself won’t get you on your holiday.
You need all three aspects.
What’s this got to do with goals?
We’re coming in to land (get i… never mind).
The holiday destination is your dreams. Without dreams, it’s like letting a boat loose out the harbour, and seeing where the wind and waves takes it – you need to choose your destination, or you might be disappointed. Dreams give you that overall direction of the things you want to achieve.
The boarding pass are goals. They add meat to the bones of your dreams. They give it specifics that start to create the framework to begin to achieve the dream you’ve set. Without goals, your dream will simple remain just that: An unfulfilled dream.
To achieve goals however, you need two things: Effective habits, and mini goals. Habits are the ‘system’ that we put in place that puts our progress on auto-pilot. They’re specific, purposeful and constantly tweaked so that each day we take a step closer to achieving our goals, which feed into our dreams. Mini-goals are the to-do list that’s constantly updated, again helping us take steps towards our
goal.
Dreams set the destination.
Goals create the framework for success.
Habits and mini goals are the system to help you get there.
And that, is how you achieve your dreams…
Kind of.
Really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I work with clients to go much deeper into these three areas, picking apart exactly how we can achieve your dreams. I unlock the mindset blocks that stand in the way. I provide clarity about exactly what you want, and exactly how to get it.
I love doing it, and find it a real privilege to be part of somebody’s journey towards their life goals, and indeed dreams.
Thank you for reading, and I wish you all the best in your own journey towards achieving your goals.
Josh Sutton
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