How Your Dream Comes To Be

“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.” ~Lao Tzu

Dear Universe,

I’ve been thinking a lot about the dreamers.

I’m a dreamer. I dream all the time of small things (the next vacation I’ll take) to bigger things (all the plans and hopes I have for my business).

I know other people who are dreamers too. They dream of moving to another country, changing their career, following a passion, of finding their soul mate or simply finding themselves.

But it’s not enough to dream.

I’ve come to realize you need to be a dreamer, a doer, a creator, a maker, a manifestor and a go-getter.

Most of all, you have to be your biggest believer.

I think of that a lot when I run into the naysayers, the doubters, the haters. If you’re a dreamer, you know the kind. They are the stealers. They are the ones who hear about your grand vision, but don’t get it, don’t like it or wish they had thought of it themselves.

They steal your thunder, your hope and your excitement by calling you unrealistic and giving you a dozen or so reasons why your dream will never come to be without so much as batting an eye.

Or they simply react in silence after you’ve shared your deepest wishes.

Those moments are deflating. They make you feel like giving up. But really those people are just there to make you question how bad you want the dream.

How much do you believe in it?

Maybe they end up being right and you let the vision go until another one comes along. But maybe their skepticism fuels your fire even more.

Maybe that’s the moment you embark on the path to chase your dream or it’s the moment that re-energizes you to keep chasing it.

If you are nodding along to any of this, then keep reading. I want to share a little bit of what I’ve discovered so far along the way. It goes a little something like this…

Part One: The Vision

One day it happens. You have an idea or maybe something even smaller than an idea—a spark, a feeling, a something. That something is like a seed that takes root in your soul and slowly begins to sprout.

As it becomes clearer, you lay out your vision. You dream this big, bright, simply brilliant dream.

You imagine it. You feel it. And you know with certainty it’s meant to be yours.

Maybe it percolates for years or maybe it’s more of an instantaneous reaction.

Soon, the dream takes over. It becomes all you can think about really. You see it the moment you wake up and it pops in flashes all throughout your day.

This is your dream. You want to make it happen, but how?

So you just dive in.

You have to trust you’ll learn as you go.

Part Two: The Preparation

You have to start somewhere. And somewhere is the beginning. That means you need to prepare.

Maybe for you preparation means healing so you can be ready to embrace the new blessings you desire. Maybe for you preparation means practice. Or maybe it means learning, studying, planning, and then practice.

It also means work. This is the part that rarely gets talked about. You constantly see before and after snapshots of people’s lives. Before the success, after the success. Before the big opportunity, after the big opportunity.

You don’t see the all the hours and days that led to the big moment—the rejections, the healing, the learning and the growing past a comfort zone into new territories. You rarely see the in between stages of the blood, sweat and tears.

And trust me, there’s a lot of that.

Another thing you don’t see?

Things are rarely as easy as you imagine they will be.

There will be roadblocks. Oh, that’s a guarantee. Yes, some things will flow and come together easily, but there will be challenges you will have to navigate.

That’s okay, but be prepared. You’ll need determination—and guts, grit and gumption (especially when those naysayers pop up because they always do).

When you want it bad enough though, you’ll find the way.

You have to prepare every single chance you have. The good news? You really won’t mind because you’ll be so driven by your vision. You’ll keep working, pushing and moving forward until you feel ready.

You’ll actually never feel ready, but there will just come a time when you know you’ve been doing the work and you feel the most ready you have up until that point. Maybe there’s a deadline or a launch date or the moment comes when you just can’t put it off anymore. So you take the leap, go for it and as for the rest? The things you forgot you needed and the things you didn’t even know you needed?

You have to trust you’ll learn as you go.

Part Three: The Execution

You are there and you’ve finally taken the leap into the dream, the vision. You have finally started. It’s wonderful!

Except for when it’s terrifying. You get terrified for so many reasons. You’re scared you’ll mess up. You’re worried you’ll do it wrong or self-sabotage your big, bright, simply brilliant dream.

You’re afraid you’ll fail.

There’s a voice inside filled with doubts saying you are not good enough, qualified enough, special enough or prepared enough.

But you are. Or you’re not. Either way it doesn’t matter. You just have to fully commit to the jump in, realizing you’re as prepared as you’ll ever be for that particular moment and that whatever else you need, you’ll figure it out.

You have to trust you’ll learn as you go.

You have to trust that you’ve gotten this far for a reason.

You have to trust that even if things don’t work out exactly how you were envisioning, they always, always, somehow come together for the best.