Transforming Your Dream Into Reality
DDo you have a hiding place for dreaming?
By larrywomack.com
What Price Glory
So you have something you want to accomplish? Starting a business or advancing your career. Finding a companion. Addressing an illness. Becoming financially secure. Writing a screenplay or a book.
Creating a brighter future for one’s self obviously isn’t an easy thing to do or success would be a part of everyone’s daily routine. In their pursuit of success, some people turn to religion, spirituality or even astrology for guidance and support. Others read biographies and listen to motivational speakers to discover the secrets of high achievers.
In almost fifty years as a consultant, counselor and advisor, I witnessed hundreds of people achieve their dreams and thousands of others fall flat on their faces.
My observation of those who succeeded and those who did not indicates no greater percentage of success with those who invoked a higher power or attempted to emulate the success of others from those who didn’t.
Faith in a higher power, wishing on a star or imitating the success journeys of others may provide marginal motivation, but they do not provide the resources or context required to achieve one’s dream.
Being a nice person doesn’t seem to help much either. Mean and unscrupulous people reach personal goals at about the same rate as kind, honest and God-fearing people.
Though following a faith and being a good person often leads to a happier life, those characteristics don’t pave the way to success.
Then what factors do come into play in achieving a goal or a dream? Is success all luck or chance? Is it 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration as suggested by Thomas Edison? Is it genetic?
It is true that some people do happen to show up at the right place at the right time or purchase the winning lottery ticket. Some people do work harder than others to reach a particular goal. Some people are just born to be successful. I contend that Bill Gates and Colin Powell became who they are primarily because of who their grandparents were – through natural genetic selection.
If you are not particularly lucky and are not of a successful lineage, what’s left for you? How can you improve your chances of achieving your dream?
The first step is to ponder this question:
“If you knew what it took to have the success you desire, wouldn’t you already be on the path towards it?”
You must agree that the opportunity to achieve any goal multiplies exponentially when one has deep knowledge in the intricacies of the issues involved in achieving it. Therefore, knowledge is the most important driver in achieving success.
Even those who fail will tell you, in retrospect, that it was what they didn’t know that hurt them the most. Yet, few of us take the time to become educated on the goal we are pursuing therefore making failure inevitable.
Pick Your Dreams Wisely
It is mockery to tell people, especially young people, that they can become anything they want to be. We are not all born with the same talents, intellect, intestinal fortitude or opportunities. Therefore, the path to a particular goal will be different for each of us – easy for some, impossible for others.
Though, it is admirable to encourage our children, friends and acquaintances to become all they can become, it is a travesty to encourage anyone to become something they can never be. This goes for you as well.
Pick your dreams wisely.
My Hiding Place
As a young child, my mother read to me almost every night. My favorite book was the Tales Of Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit was my special hero. Smart, wiry, and always getting into and out of trouble. He had a special hiding place for dreaming, thinking and planning his next adventure and so did I.
My special hiding place was a table in the living room, with a cloth that draped almost to the floor. It was across from the RCA console radio, so I sometimes listened to my favorite shows from there. And, the dark, quiet, isolated hiding place was where I daydreamed and played-out fantasy adventures.
When I began to explore my neighborhood, on my own, my hiding place became a majestic old weeping willow tree in the backyard of a neighbor. The tree appeared to be a million years old and was the tallest tree I had ever seen. Though its branches were too high for climbing, myriad drooping willows provided a comforting dome of shade and a perfect hideaway for daydreaming and reflection. It was my hiding place where I could lean back on the gargantuan trunk, sort through my recently accumulated knowledge, and dream of future exploits.
Closing my eyes now, I can hear my friends at play in the distance, smell the earth beneath me, feel the bark against my head, taste the bitter juice from the willow branch between my teeth and still vividly recall many of those childhood daydreams; some of which came to pass and some of which, thank God, didn’t.
The closer I got to adulthood, the closer to reality my dreams became. And, the possibility of achieving them dramatically increased.
In high school I sang in talent contests and dreamed that one day I’d sing on the Ed Sullivan Show. Though I never performed on that show, my combo appeared at the Copacabana in New York. I sang at the Sundown Club on Sunset Strip in LA and even performed with Duke Ellington’s Orchestra.
How was I able to come that close to realizing my dream? It is because of what I did between the dream and its realization.
In high school, I went where bands were playing and asked to sing with them. I constantly listened to crooners on the record player in my room. In college, I studied music, formed a band, and took it on the road. The rest you already know.
I eventually gave up my career in music, when I realized that I had reached my level of competence. On the road I learned there were so many people more talented than I who had been at it longer and still hadn’t made it. I began to develop a plan B and dream a new dream.
Knowledge is Key
Of all the talented people who studied music at my school, Austin Peay State College in Clarksville Tennessee, I came closest to stardom. But note that the percentage of students who studied at the Berkley School of Music and Julliard became successful performers at a considerably higher rate. Why is that?
Why are there more respected doctors, lawyers, presidents and business people from Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton than from other universities?
The answer to both questions is more knowledge is provided to the students at those learned institutions than to those at other schools. These prestigious institutions of learning hire the best teachers, provide the most challenging and rewarding courses of study and attract the most gifted students. Also, more doors are open to their graduates because of the successes of their alumni.
Knowledge is the key to achieving your dreams.
Not the knowledge you have, but the knowledge you acquire on the way to achieving your dream.
Planning From The Future
Because success is something towards which you are striving, becoming successful is a futuristic concept. In the beginning, it’s all in your mind. Most dreamers, however, get frustrated when reality bites and they suddenly realize they lack the knowledge, information, tools or circumstance to move towards their dream.
When embarking on a journey towards achieving a dream, most people plan from today forward. I suggest that developing a plan backwards from the dream is more effective.
Plan from the future not for it
Read these words of Albert Einstein very carefully and the theory of planning from the future will become clearer:
“In this world the passage of time brings increasing order. If time is an arrow, that arrow points to order. The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past randomness, disintegration, dissipation.”
Einstein used pattern to mean a picture of the future – the images through which your dream is reveled. By intentionally painting a picture of your desired future, you will see how it will appear and learn what is required to authenticate it or make it real.
He used organization to express sequence¾those events that must occur in order to achieve the dream. Planning from the future requires identifying the steps leading back from the dream rather than towards it. If ten steps are required, identify what will be required in steps 9-8 and so on. Rather than beginning with 1 and on to 2, etc.
Union was his term for synthesis – the process of combining different ideas, influences or objects into a new whole. The future provides the knowledge required to achieve it, better than does the past or present. While planning backwards, make note of the knowledge, information, tools and circumstance required to accomplish that particular step.
Intensification means lasering in on a significant dynamic goal or dream instead of being overcome by myriad choices of what the future might hold. Chase only one rabbit at a time. Chase only one dream at a time.
It is how one sees the future that determines success. If the future is seen as a source, the possibilities are endless. If it is seen as a mystery, the chances for owning it are remote.
What all that esoteric, futuristic babble means is that grand schemes are rarely achieved looking down at the present or back to the past.
If you want something new, you have to learn something new and try something new.
Achieving a Dream
When I began giving up music (it was a process), I was just entering a relationship with, Diane, my wife-to-be. She was all that I hoped for but more than I felt I deserved. On a Sunday drive, I took Diane to see my old neighborhood. By chance I happened to notice the old willow tree and memories spun through my head much faster than I could relate them to her.
When I returned to my bedroom in my father’s house, I closed the door and began to daydream about my potential life with Diane, in much the same way as I did during those long hours beneath the willow tree.
I dreamed of an opulent life – one far beyond the means of a semi-employed musician. It included children, a home, a picket fence and travel to exotic locations.
I looked ten years out and the way from here to there seemed impossible. I continued to hold that image of my future life for several days; eventually concluding it was what I really wanted.
We were married within three months of our first meeting.
Dream the Improbable Dream
Once the dream was permanently etched on my mind. I began to think about the possibilities; beginning with exploring the kind of career it would take for me to achieve the dream.
A plan began to form in my mind both from the dream and towards the dream. My dreams of the future always, in some way, included New York City – the Mecca of entertainment, intellect and the arts. As a young person I always enjoyed movies of sophistication more than action movies.
My mother had a dream for me as well. She wanted me to become an author. Every time we played the card game, Authors, she’d bring it up and we’d fantasize about it.
Dream Comes True
Diane and I had a wonderful 40 years together before her death. A lovely home, magnificent children, and travel to many interesting places including trips to New York.
My business career evolved from a creative director in an ad agency (not too far from being a musician) to account executive, marketing consultant, business consultant, management consultant and eventually to becoming an author.
My long-held dream to be recognized by New Yorkers as a contributor to the body of its creative intellectual content came true.
Though I visited New York many times during my business career, it was that trip to my publisher in recognition of my first published work that has always meant the most. Returning to the hotel, from a power champagne lunch with my editor and the company’s marketing director, my thoughts were on my deceased mother. How proud she would be.
When I got to the room, Diane asked, “How did it go?”
I said, “They told me that my picture card would be placed in the Authors deck alongside Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott and my name would eventually replace Sol Bellows as an answer in Trivial Pursuit.”
My dream came true.
Dream/Think/Plan/Act
It was during the preparation of the manuscript of that book that I discover the process that would change the way my clients, friends and I approached our dreams and dramatically improve our chances of achieving them.
An old adage goes: Never read a book written by someone who has written more books than they’ve read.
During the preparation of the manuscript I read many books on a variety of topics and became particularly fascinated with a tome on tantric mediation, as practiced by Hindu yogis.
Through tantric meditation a Hindu yogi can access what Eastern spiritualists call the third eye. In the meditative state energy rises from the base of the spine and the eyes roll upward, allowing the yogi to become absorbed in a vision of the future seen only through the third eye.
The physical sensation of the experience locates the third eye between and just above the physical eyes that remain closed during the activity. One’s whole consciousness becomes, what some call, an out-of-body experience. The yogi not only creates a vision of the future, he becomes both a witness to it and a participant in it. In a sense, the third eye becomes that special hiding place where dreams are born.
Tantric meditation is an intentional, focused version of dreaming, like I did at the willow tree. When one is in a trance like the yogi, or dreaming of a future, that future becomes less foreboding or illusive than when just thinking about it a normal fashion. Looking at the future through the third eye provides a more confident perspective than does examining it from present or past viewpoints.
The message to me in the tantric meditation treatise is that by consciously or unconsciously beginning with the ageless meditative process of the yogi, individuals can embark on a successful journey towards a dream.
The dream/think/plan/act process was born from this spiritual revelation coupled with my interpretation of Einstein prophetic scientific view of the future.
Here is the simple but elegant way to achieve your desired future:
Dream before you think.
Think before you plan.
Plan before you act.
ACT!
The process begins with a dream that eventually dissolves into thinking, adding parameters to the dream. Thinking then morphs into planning, creating a backwards roadmap. Following that roadmap forward through appropriate actions is how dreams come true.
There is no future in the past or present. Looking down at the present or back to the past rarely produces stellar opportunities. Looking out from the future does.
Find your hiding place; imagine your future through your third eye; and get smarter with each step you take towards your dream.
The future you want can be yours because, right now, it is all in your mind.
Dream before you think.
Think before you plan.
Plan before you act.
ACT!
Final Word
As you take the dream/think/plan/act journey, never underestimate the power of ignorance to derail you at any time. The only defense against ignorance is knowledge.
Remember: It’s what you don’t know that can hurt the most.
