4 Steps to Achieving Your Dream
What is your dream? This can be a surprisingly hard question for many people to answer. Dreams get forgotten as you go through life. Sometimes, they exist more as a sense of longing than as a concrete ambition. However, with a few exceptions, if you are truly determined, you can achieve most dreams.
Articulate It
It can be surprisingly difficult to get to the root of your dream even if it seems straightforward. If you want to be a famous actor, maybe that’s really exactly what you’re after, but try to do some thinking, talking to trusted loved ones and perhaps some journaling to figure out what you really want. Even something as simple as pursuing a career change might just be the symptom of a bigger dream you have yet to uncover.
You will also need to do this if your dream is something that is truly impossible–you want to live on another planet, or you’re 40 and you want to be an Olympic gymnast. In the former case, maybe you want to work for NASA or a private company working on space travel. For the latter, you could start looking into adult gymnastics classes as well as how to become a volunteer for the Olympics. Whatever your dream is, put it into a concrete form that you can work toward.
Articulate Your Obstacles
The next step is figuring out your obstacles and how to overcome them. Maybe you have a dream to spend a year traveling the world, but you can’t afford it. Your object then needs to be to save as much money as possible for the next several years. You can get a second job, cut out subscriptions and memberships, walk or cycle to work instead of driving, and stop going out to eat. You could also consider student loan refinancing. With a new loan, you might have lower monthly payments and can put the savings aside.
Make a Map
You need a clear roadmap to figure out where to go next. To go back to the example of wanting to be a famous actor, you might want to move to New York or Los Angeles, take acting classes and start going to auditions. Be sure to list every step that you need to take. If you aren’t sure at certain points, do your best. You’ll be refining this list as you get closer to achieving your dream.
Checking In and Course Corrections
Keep your map close by and refer to it regularly to make sure that you are on target. If not or if you have new information about how you should proceed, you can make course corrections. Keep in mind as well that as you get closer to what you hope to achieve, one of two things will happen. One is that the dream might change. This is fine as long as you are sure that your wants are genuinely changing, and you aren’t sabotaging yourself. On the other hand, you may be well on track to achieve your dream, in which case you will need a new one to work toward. This achievement can be exhilarating, but it can also be confusing because you may feel lost and without a clear aim for a while. This is normal, and you should take the time to enjoy your accomplishment and figure out what you want next.