Success
You’ve got dreams and goals that are restless. They’re always hungry. They wake you up in the middle of the night looking for a snack and they demand big meals during the day.
They may always seem like they’re saying; “me, me, me” but they’re not selfish. These dreams just want you to help them grow so that in return they can help you.
You’re the caregiver of your dreams so it’s up to you to feed them healthy food and meals. However, perhaps you feel like you aren’t providing that well enough. So to help you, here are six healthy foods to feed your hungry dreams.
1. A story
Nothing nourishes your dreams like feeding your mind and senses. Even if all you have is five minutes you can read, watch, and listen to a story that will inspire and motivate you even longer than the time you spent listening, reading, or watching.
Some great places to start are at Good News Now – a news site dedicated to only positive news, GivesMeHope – a site that shares life stories that ignite hope, and even on Youtube. Here are three excellent videos from Youtube worth bookmarking:
- Moments
- Famous Failures
- A Story Of A Sign
2. Frustration and failure
It might taste bitter to you and your dreams but frustration and failure contain essential vitamins and nutrients that will strengthen, motivate, and create perseverance.
3. A worthwhile purpose
Just like you, your dreams need purpose to live. And not just any purpose; a noble purpose, an authentic purpose, a worthwhile purpose.
Purposes that are rooted in earning as much money as possible or in garnering fame cannot sustain a dream for long.
Dreams need purposes such as to help others, whether they be strangers or your loved ones, or to leave a legacy.
4. Criticism
Criticism is just as bitter as frustration and failure, and because of this you’ll want to shield your dreams from it.
You and your dreams need to instead feed off of criticism. Sometimes critics have decent advice worth noting, and other times they spew out criticism that is so infuriating that you want to keep moving and working harder to “show them.”
Give your dreams a little bit of the criticism to chew on once and awhile. If they really don’t like it, they can always spit it out.
5. Time
Every single day, even if it’s just for 10 minutes, work on your dream. Don’t let yourself get distracted or let “life” get in the way.
You can’t neglect your dreams, because they will quickly die and begin to haunt you.
6. Success
You’ll often feed success to your dreams in different sizes. Sometimes it’ll be a meal, sometimes a giant banquet, and most often it’ll be a little snack. Even though it’s a little treat, it will energize you and your dreams so don’t overlook it.
Have any other “meals” or “foods” that you feed to your hungry dreams? Please share your “recipes” below.
You set a deadline and you’ve worked your ass off day in and day out. You’ve remained positive and you’ve jumped over and busted through any obstacles that stood in your way, but still, time is not on your side and it looks like you aren’t going to achieve your goal before the timer that you created is up.
This feeling is extremely frustrating and causes many people to fail.
So what can you do when it turns to the 11th hour and it feels like time is up?
Create a new deadline
Give yourself a fresh start and created a new deadline. It’s not glamorous to keep pushing and overcoming obstacles especially when you’re tired from the long journey you’ve already traveled, but it’s better to be late than to never show up at all.
Make a new, shorter deadline
You may be thinking; “Huh? I didn’t even achieve the goal in time for my first deadline, so why would I make this new deadline even shorter?”
The reasoning behind creating a shorter deadline is because people often come up with deadlines that are too long.
When this happens, they become complacent. Too much time allows them to put off action until later. You will hear these people utter words like; “no rush,” “ah, I’ll do it later or tomorrow,” and “when I get some more time.” And yet, before they know it, their deadline is up and they haven’t achieved anything at all.
A shorter deadline may be the thing you need to keep you on your toes and moving forward.
Recognize that the 11th hour is an obstacle itself
When you haven’t achieved your goals and the 11th hour strikes, the 11th hour itself morphs into an obstacle that is actually there to test your endurance, your passion, your attitude, and you; and in the long run it’s there to help you. So may be time really is on your side, it’s just giving you some tough love.
Remember that the 11th hour is a proving ground for those who refuse to give up and a wasteland for those who are too weak.
To help you better achieve your dreams and goals you need to free your mind of the myths and misconceptions about them.
These myths and misconceptions are negatively effecting you and are most likely holding you back from achieving your desired dreams and goals.
Here are 5 myths about achieving your dreams and goals.
1. Dreams = goals
The words dreams and goals are often used interchangeably, but they’re really very different. Dreams often don’t have a deadline attached to them or a plan for how to achieve them. Dreams are seen as “some day.” And goals are something that is a work in progress.
2. Continue chasing it even if you’ve lost the vigor for it
What if you turn a dream into a goal and during the pursuit of achieving it, you find you’ve lost the passion for it? Do you continue as is, even if you don’t enjoy it? I say no, but I also don’t think you should just give up. There are three options you can explore instead.
1 – Take a break – perhaps you’ve just lost steam (everyone does) and need time to recharge. That time could be anywhere from a few weeks to maybe even a few years.
2 – Evaluate the goal – figure out what it is about the goal that you don’t enjoy. Is it the hard work? If so, then you shouldn’t quit because hard work isn’t easy and you can’t escape it when achieving a goal, no matter the goal. Is it the actual goal you don’t like? Did you want to become a fashion designer but didn’t find it all that enjoyable? If so then consider the next option.
3 – Modify your goal – You might not like designing fashion but you probably still love clothes and fashion. So there are a million other ways you can pursue fashion. You could become a stylist, a trend hunter, or write about fashion. Most industries are the same way with various paths you can take so there’s no need for you to give up.
3. Deadlines can’t be changed
Every one of us has failed to achieve a goal before the deadline we set. So what are we supposed to do when that happens? Give up? No! We need to give ourselves some more time and make a new deadline. But also feel good about what we have achieved along the way, even if they’re small achievements.
4. No one should touch my dreams and goals
It’s very important that you stay in control of your dreams and goals but sometimes it’s necessary for you to hand off part of it to someone else so they can help. It’s often hard to achieve any goal without the help of others. But of course, in the end you have the most control in achieving your goals.
5. I should wait for the perfect time
The perfect time for chasing a dream; does it exist? Sure, the “perfect” time is ASAP. The perfect time is not when the kids move out, it’s not when you become rich, it’s not when the economy gets better, it’s not when you become older, it’s not past you, and it’s not really ever going to come because it’s already here.
Have you come to realize other myths and misconceptions about achieving dreams and goals? If so, please share in the comments below.
This is a guest post.
It’s hard to come across a blog about personal development or self improvement these days that doesn’t mention goals and how to go about turning them into a reality. After-all, whether they are big or small, we all have them. Common goals include the desire to get out of debt, finding a partner, increasing productivity or even something more challenging like escaping the rat race.
The typical goal achievement cycle you usually read about tends to go something like this: focus on what you want, map out a plan to get it, and stay consistent until you succeed.
If we break things down to their core level, that three step plan is actually enough. That advice really is all we need. If things are that simple though, why do so many people fail to achieve their goals? Is it because they are lazy? Is it because they are complacent? Is it because they don’t want things badly enough?
Maybe. More likely, it’s often a combination of these things. Instead of trying to pick apart all the possible reasons why people might stumble on their path to achievement, I want to share a simple exercise that will give you your own answers. This is a very simple idea, it will take 24 hours, and the results will dramatically improve your chances of goal achievement.
The Exercise
Before I tell you what you need to do, I want to lay down a basic foundation. Something fairly obvious, but often forgotten, is that your current life situation is nothing more than the result of your actions. Your health, your finances, your happiness and everything else. Their current progress is based on your current output. For example, if you ate sensibly and did 50 sit-ups every day, your beer belly would flatten and your stomach muscles would start to tone.
Similarly, if you went jogging every day, your level of fitness and your stamina would improve. If you save a percentage of your income each month, you are going to have a tidy sum in savings at the end of the year. If you perform the actions, life has no choice but to reward you with the results. In essence, all you need to remember is that your current situation is completely based on your current actions.
Therefore, to change that situation, you need to change your actions. Yet, we can’t know where we are going wrong until we identify what those actions are. Remember I said that this exercise was going to be simple? Well, that’s because it is. What I recommend you do, on a typical day in your life, is record every single action you take. That’s it, really!
Of course, you don’t have to write down visits to the bathroom, but things like the time you woke up, what you did for lunch (and for how long), what work you actually completed in the day, how much time you spent checking emails and that kind of thing. This isn’t exciting (it isn’t supposed to be) but it only takes one day, and you’ll be left with clear results of where your time is being spent.
The results of this exercise will mean different things to different people. If you’re trying to grow a business and it’s not going anywhere, you’ll probably realise that you’re spending too much time on ineffective activities. Similarly, if you want to lose weight but don’t exercise and instead you binge eat, it will be clear why your progress is slow or even non existent.
The reason this exercise works so well is because:
- You get to see a clear, concise output of how your day looks
- You can’t fool yourself about being busy or being effective, it’s all written down
- It will make it easy to identify time wasters in your life
A lot of people will read this idea, and, even if they like it, will simply dismiss it. I know because I used to be that type of person myself. Instead, why not give it a shot? This is an exercise for one day of your life that will give you a clear view of where your time is going and perhaps more critically, where your time is not.
Don’t forget: life is just outputting whatever you put in. If you daily log doesn’t show a list of actions you’re happy with, at least you can now change that. I performed this same exercise around 2 months ago and I’m now much healthier, far more productive, and I make a lot more money.
What do you have to lose?
Written by Glen Allsopp
Glen is a blogger who writes on the subject of Personal Development. He also tackles topics such as Personality Development in order to help people realise they can be who they want to be.
Most of the articles regarding dreams and goals here on Lyved and in other places are about achieving them. We talk about how to get there, but not what to do when you are there and dreams become reality.
This TED presentation by Richard St. John got me thinking about this. Richard discusses that success is a continuous journey, not a destination. But most people see it as something you climb to, reach, plant a flag in the ground, and put up your feet.
I thought just like this not too long ago. I would achieve some success and try to live off of it for as long as possible; without putting in the same effort as i did to get myself there. I didn’t know then how to handled achieved dreams.
Richard says that the 8 steps to achieving AND sustaining success are:
1. Have passion
2. Work hard
3. Focus
4. Push yourself
5. Have ideas
6. Improve
7. Serve
8. Persist
Richard is right on the money with these 8 steps, but I’d also like to add more to his lists so that you know how to handle an achieved dream and that your success continues.
Don’t lose sight of small achieved opportunities
Don’t be so blinded by pursuing huge dreams that you toss aside small opportunities. Huge dreams start with small steps.
Be prepared for the next phase
This isn’t about having a plan b but about having a new plan for the next phase that comes when you achieve a dream. Know what actions you might need to take or things you might need to say.
Live and capture the moment
It’s important to be prepared for the near future or next phase after a dream is achieved but more importantly you have to live in the moment so they you can get a firm grip on your dream. Even when you achieve a dream, sometimes they find a way of slipping from you.
Remind yourself how amazing it is to have achieved it
Often you’ll be blown away at what you’ve done. It will keep you excited and motivated and it will remind you that hard work pays off.
How do you handle achieved dreams so that your success continues? Please share in the comments below.
Related articles:
- The Art of Hard Work
- How to just do it
- Give up your giving up habit
