Dreaming Your Way to Greater Success

Goals and dreams are vital ingredients of the success that we’re all so aggressively pursuing. In this regard, your chosen field of endeavor does not matter. You can be an inventor, a designer, a parent, an office manager, a college student, or anything else; this truth will remain the same.

You will seldom go farther than you can dream and you will never reach higher than you attempt. Or as the motivational poster at my local gym puts it, “You will miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Real leaders are visionaries. They see things before they become realities. In their minds, ideas are as real the moment they dream them as they are the day they make them happen.

True leaders tend to have goals, and not all of them are directly related to their job. Rather, they have the goals for their department and they have goals for themselves. The goals they have for themselves often come out at work even if they are not part of it.

And here is the key – both of these types of goals are required for a leader to be successful. For many leaders, the difference between work and life is almost indistinguishable in their minds. That is, they see all of these goals equally.

Before someone demonizes that and says “my life is more important than my work” I should say this: Why would you want to do something at work that you do not enjoy? Work is part of life. If you can easily separate them, then it is time to dream a little bigger, to work a little harder, and to find what you need to make your life better.

~ Quote by Mark Wagner

Passive Desires vs. Passionate Desires

I hope that as you read through this remarkably insightful quote by Mark Wagner you began to realize the incredibly important truth that if your goals and dreams aren’t affecting your actions and lifestyle, then they are no more useful than the dreams you have when you sleep at night. You wake up only to realize that it was nothing more than a fantasy. It was Antoine de Saint-Exupery who said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

The goals that are meaningful are the ones that motivate. There is a difference between wishful thinking and passionate desires.

Passive Desires: Passive desires are nothing more than wishful thinking. Most of us wish to have fame and fortune. It would be fun and we probably wouldn’t turn it down if it were offered to us, but for most of us that dream doesn’t fill us with a compelling desire that transforms our lifestyle.

Passionate Desires: Passionate desires are those that transform your life. I dream of providing for my beautiful wife and daughter. My goal is to care for them and support them and this desire transforms everything about me. It changes my work habits. It fuels my behavior. I dictates my daily schedule. I will do whatever it takes to care for those two beautiful ladies.

What really ignites your passions? Which dreams are so powerful that they change the way that you live and behave? Which ones make your heart beat a little bit faster every time you think about them?

You’re probably not going to feel that passion chasing after goals that others have set for you. You’re going to have to look inside yourself, do the soul searching that’s necessary to find the truth. Discern what motivates you and then chase after it for all you’re worth.

What’s made the biggest difference in my life is to create better goals. I used to set most of my goals based on family/societal expectations of what I “should” want. Not very motivating! Since I’ve learned to listen to my own voice and structure my goals around that and my values (creativity, health, etc.) I have a fairly easy go of it.

~ Quote by Jean Sarauer

The Leader’s Discussion

Are you in the habit of setting goals that are meaningful and worthwhile? Are you a passive dreamer or a passionate dreamer? In other words, are you allowing your dreams and goals to transform your life?