What is a dream? No not the thing that you do when you sleep. I am talking about the thing that you hope one day may come to pass. The want. To get married, start a family, start a business, that car you imagine yourself in every day, being debt free; just to name a few. A dream is that thing in the far-off ether.
You can see it, but you cannot reach it. Maybe you have had glimpses of it before – a test drive if you will. But like a strip tease or internet pornography, the in the moment sensation does not compare to what that thing would actually be like if it was your reality. The real touch. Owning the keys and not giving them back. Being okay and not just saying you’re okay.
How do you close that gap in your life? The space between where you would like to be and where you actually are. For some of you, you may have what is called a pipe dream. Something that for all intents and purposes will never come to pass. Before we can discuss the manifestation of a dream, or the lack thereof, it is important to understand why dreams are important.
One of the Key Components of a Dream is Hope
Hope is the momentum of life. It is the reason you get out of bed in the morning. Some people think that they wake up to go to work. The reality is most people only go to work for the money.
Ask yourself this: if you did not have to support you or your family would you spend your life energy in time – working for the fabricated concept that we call money?
Governments create currency. The only reason that it [money] is real, is because we make it real. 68% of people are disengaged at work. That means that the majority of employees would rather be doing something else with their life energy (time). What gets you out of bed in the morning is not your job. Your job may be the reason, but the motivation is your dreams.
Everyone needs capital. That is just the way life was designed to operate. But for not necessarily all people, though I would argue a plurality, their capital is only as valuable as what they can do with it.
The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil. I think your average person does not necessarily love money, but they do love their family. They do love being able to put gas in their car. And they do love going to the store and getting everything that they need.
Dreams VS “Real Life”
The difficulty in relation to needing money to live, and the concept of dreams, is that a dream is diametrically opposed to reality. One directly impacts you, while the other for most people is a pleasant distraction at best. Nevertheless, your dreams are still important; Because without something to motivate you, life feels empty.
So, what is the value of a dream – whether it be one that you are working towards, or one that just passes your mind on occasion? They represent life. Think of a heart monitor. Your dreams are the proverbial pulse of your life. If you allow your dreams to flat line, yes you will still technically be living, but to quote a famous rapper: to live does not mean that you are alive.
Since dreams are the essence of a meaningful life, then the question that you should be asking yourself daily is, how am I pursuing my dreams in my reality?
In this way, it is possible to have your cake and eat it too. That being said, it may not be the flavor of cake that you want – but pick your battles. This is where the process of making your dreams a reality begins.
Most of us will Never get 100% of Exactly what we Want
In life, there is this thing called compromise. Compromise is when two or more parties are willing to make concessions so that a mutual agreement can be met. It is not that your dreams cannot become reality, it’s that you have to be willing to accept the reality of your dreams regardless of the form that they come in.
To use my own life for example, where I thought I would be in life versus where I am, is different in presentation, but the same in direction. Growing up I thought I was going to become a psychologist. Go to school for 10+ years, start a private practice, conduct groundbreaking research, have a house, a wife, and kids, be an active member in a local church, mentor young people, and maybe even hold some sort of public office.
That was the dream.
The reality is I am an entrepreneur, an author, unmarried with no intentions of becoming so, not active in my community, and while I lean heavily on what I learned in school from receiving my master’s in Psychology, I am not conducting experiments or writing grant proposals.
My life is not any less impactful, it is just not what I thought it would be. And guess what, that is A-okay. The truth is, you must make peace with your reality before you can begin to try to manipulate it.
Dreams, Potential, and You
Another word that can be used in relation to your dreams is potential. The word potential intrinsically means absolutely nothing. It’s what could be. And a fact of life is anything could be. When you dream, essentially you are imagining what could be for your life.
How this ultimately works with your reality is: your life is your canvas, the resources that you have available to you are your paint and brushes, and what you ultimately decide to paint is a reflection of what you see in relation to your dreams.
When you paint a portrait of something what you are doing is translating on to canvas whatever it is that you see in front of you. There are a multitude of confounding variables in relation to this: are you a painter, what is your paint style, what angle are you seeing what you are painting from etc.
In the same way, when you are trying to make your dream a reality, your dream is the thing that you are painting. How you interpret that thing on to the canvas of your life is influenced by life itself.
Life Wants to Happen For You not To You
The number one obstacle in making your dreams a reality is you fighting against your reality. The only reason why this happens is because you are living counterintuitively to who you are. Here at Life with Ken we call this living out of alignment.
Living in alignment means that the totality of your being is going in the same direction. Once you learn how to do that, then, and only then, can you begin to manifest your dreams into your reality.
Once that happens you will begin to realize your fullest potential, meaning, that while you may not bring to fruition the exact dream that you envisioned, what will come to pass will be better because it will be authentically you.
Do not fight the direction that life wants to take you. Go where you are being led. Follow your instincts and the rest will come. Making your dreams a reality is a combination of putting in effort, being willing to compromise, accepting who you really are, and accepting what life is presenting to you.
To dream is fundamentally a good thing. Trying to force your will on your dreams will never work. What God has for you is for you. It is not a matter of whether or not your dream will come to pass, as much as, it is a matter of whether or not you will receive it when it does – regardless and however different the manifestation is from the vision.
Ken
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