Got dreams? What are they?
- Sharing your insight and experience with an ever-expanding community?
- Transforming your remarkable concept into a remarkable enterprise?
- Opening an online boutique for heirloom-quality gifts that enrich family life?
or simply - Using your purple-cow idea to change the world in your own memorable way?
Oh, you have dreams, all right. So tell me…what are you doing with them? If the 2009 dreamscape was featureless and barren, let’s look at some ways to make you a Big-Time Dreamer in 2010. Here we go!
Dreams Are A Lot Like …
Oh. One thing before we begin. If you’re near a stocked refrigerator, go get an egg. Seriously. I’ll wait. (Or just picture the egg; this is an exercise in focus. White egg or brown egg, raw or hard-boiled, ostrich, chicken, or hummingbird. No matter.)
Now look at your dream the egg – in your hand or in your mind. And consider these observations about eggs (and dreams):
- The bird waits in the egg. (James Allen)
Today’s dream defines the scope of tomorrow’s reality. No dreams today, bleak reality tomorrow. - [An] egg…must be hatched or go bad. (C. S. Lewis)
Dreams have a finite shelf life. They spoil if left unattended for too long. And they stink. - When arguing with a stone, an egg is always wrong. (African proverb)
Don’t break your dreams by bouncing them off defenders of the status quo; we all know someone with no idea how to lay an egg, who considers herself to be “a very good judge of omelettes” that can be made only from eggs that are broken.
Five Steps to Hatching Your Dream
- Stop thinking and talking about the dream. Do something.
Early in the hatching cycle, eggs in an incubator must be turned every day. It’s easy–and comfortable–to build mental castles by reading you-can-do-it blogs and books and sharing/discussing your dream with supportive friends. Take a hiatus from contemplation and conversation; re-focus your attention and energy from thinking and talking to doing. - Carve out the specific terrain where your dream will flourish.
Seth Godin calls this changing the game: redefine the playing field so that your dream is the only game and you are the only qualified player. Brian Clark calls it daring to be different. I call it “being an odd, but singularly attractive, duck.” This is the strategic part of the dream-hatching plan. - Develop a project plan.
Create a simple dream-hatching project plan and schedule. My plan has the following important (at least to me) pieces:- Strategy, to document the “business case” for your dream; mine is a “stream-of-consciousness” statement that describes my dream in great detail, including the nature of my particular attractive odd duck.
- Tactics, to outline the steps you will take turn your dreams into reality.
- Timing, to schedule one or more blocks of time every day to work on the tactics in your plan.
- Keep a dream-hatching log.
My husband bought me a WII Fit Plus system for Christmas. Since I consider myself among the world’s least fit, this particular collection of bits, boards, and controls has presented something of a challenge. However, after the first few days of on-and-off workouts, I’ve settled in to a regular routine, in large part because of the annoying little animated balance board that insists on maintaining a graphical log of my activities. Seeing that line go in the right direction keeps me motivated. The same principle applies to my 2010 dream-hatching log–the one with milestones and scheduled dates that make me happy when they coincide.
Come up with your own system for keeping track of your activities. Or drop me a line and I’ll send you mine. - Be prepared for the unexpected.
New hatchlings may exhibit “curious chick behaviors …the chicks will be very active one moment, then fall in a heap with their heads on the ground as if they were taking their very last breath. A few moments later, they’ll be up and chirping once again.” Give your hatching/newly hatched dream a chance to develop its own rhythm; erratic ups and down are common in the first months of life in the real world.
Over Easy = Broken Dreams
If you want to be a big-time dreamer, over easy is not an option. So get hatching!