STEP ONE
Get Excited About Your Life
The biggest adventure you can take
is to live the life of your dreams.
- OPRAH WINFREY
People who have lost control of their lives face a dilemma that most never solve. With days that seem to be spinning out of control, they have lost sight of their dreams of a wonderful life. And as the song says, "If you don't have a dream, how are you going to make a dream come true?"
Seems obvious, doesn't it? Fortunately, this can change and creating a dream is a big step in taking control of your life. It will get you excited about your possibilities.
Start Building Your Dream Now
If you want more from life, you have to be available when opportunity knocks. You CAN live the life of your dreams, so you might as well decide what this means to you.
You live in a friendly universe that wants everything good for you. According to America's foremost success author, Napoleon Hill, "The universe is constructed to allow you to achieve your greatest potential." You could even say, as Wallace Wattles taught in his classic book The Science of Getting Rich, that it is your right to have everything you could possible want to live fully and grow. Wattles understood that living an extraordinary life is your birthright.
It's also true that this doesn't happen automatically. You could say it happens on purpose, that you have a purpose. Why do you want to create a better life?
To connect with this purpose , this Why, you have to expand your idea of what is possible.
All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney
What do you want? What are your dreams? There's no time like the present to find out.
Before reading further, take a few minutes now to think about what you would want to be, do, and have if there were no limits on health, money, time, geographical location, or anything else that might limit your possibilities. If you could imagine your brightest possible future, what would you see? What are your heartfelt desires?
You can learn a lot by following your heart. Take out a pen and paper and write down the life you imagine for yourself and those you love. Here are a few things to consider:
These questions are intended to start you thinking and dreaming.
This is where we started years ago when we realized we had lost control of our lives. We were burned out at our jobs and our lives were becoming mundane. We wanted more and realized that something had to change dramatically if we wanted to take control.
It did and the results were amazing. When we really understood our Why and opened to change, the universe responded and life has never been the same. We took control and we will forever be grateful for learning how to dream.
What Would Motivate You?
Maybe you want to get out of debt, pay a few bills, or start a college fund for your children. Maybe you want to take your family on a vacation and enjoy some free time. Maybe buying a new car or a new home would motivate you. Or maybe you want to be wealthy.
Whatever you want is fine. The point is to have a dream of a bright future before you every day, one that will inspire you enough that you will also feel excited about making your dream come true. This is the first step in creating an extraordinary life for yourself and for those you love.
As success coaches, we have seen again and again how critical it is to know what would motivate you to take action. We now ask our clients to measure how important their goal or Why is and how motivated they are to achieve it. We use a scale of one to ten, where one is not very important and motivated and ten is VERY, VERY important and motivated. Think about this. Is your dream important enough that you are highly motivated to make it come true? We hope so.
A Beacon to Light Your Path
The vision of your bright future stands like a beacon to light your path and stimulates you to take what we call inspired action to make it happen. Once you understand the principle behind inspired action, it is clearly the only kind of action that makes sense.
If you took even a few minutes to dream and thought of a few things that excite you about being alive, you are probably also excited about finding a way to make this possible. See, you are becoming inspired already. In the next chapter, you will learn how you can takes steps toward your dream as we present what may very well be the opportunity of a lifetime.
The Importance of Getting Your Thinking Right
You may wonder why we would start with talking about a dream in a book that's about building a business. We want to get you on the right track and as you have seen, this is only possible for a person who has a dream.
The first key to success is your thoughts and feelings.
This is where everything that has ever been created starts. World-renowned Success Trainer Tony Robbins says that 90% of success is in your thoughts and feelings, and the other 10% is in learning systems and techniques. Most people approach it backwards, focusing almost solely on techniques, and, as you will see, most people don't succeed.
As Napoleon Hill stated,
“Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind
through repetition of thought.”
This wisdom has been passed down through the ages. You have to know your Why and focus on it. As Earl Nightingale taught, “You get what you think about most of the time.”
This is critical! If you miss the first 90%, your thinking, none of the systems and techniques in the world will work for you.
When you are guided by positive thoughts and good feelings connected with dreams of a wonderful future, everything else falls into place. You become inspired to implement systems and techniques for making it happen. Your dream gets you on track, so you can succeed and create the life you desire. After all,
“Big dreamers are the ones who get big results!”