Achieving your Dreams: The WHAT, The WHY and The WHO
I remember standing in my bedroom one day as a young man who had recently graduated from the University of Minnesota. I was thinking about what I wanted my life to be about. I was enthusiastic and I was an idealist. The thing that occurred to me was that I didn’t want to live a life lulled into mediocrity or just maintain the status quo. I didn’t really want to live the American dream of getting a good job, buying a house, settling down and retiring at 65.
I wanted revolution! I wanted to go after my dreams and live a life inspiring others to do the same — to not settle for mediocrity but go after their dreams as well.
That notion has always stuck with me. I’ve always had this feeling that life is one big grand event — like a big party, and we get to decide how we’re going to live it. We don’t have to follow in the footsteps of others if we’re not inspired by them. We can blaze a trail and live a life that leaves an inspiring legacy.
I don’t know about you, but that excites me!
I’ve decided to call this journey of pursuing my dreams the dream highway. (It is also the title of an album I released in 2018.)
Let me ask you, has the open road or a trail ever beckoned you? Personally, I love to go for walks and bike rides. What I really love is when I’m in a new place and there’s a trail that I’ve never been on before. Though I know the farther along the path I go the longer it’s going to take to get back home, I can’t seem to stop myself from venturing on and exploring the path to see what’s up ahead.
I believe that’s what the dream highway does. It calls to us. It beckons us to come explore.
Achieving Your Dreams: The WHAT
Before we can achieve our dreams it’s important that we get clarity on what our dreams are! This may sound like a no-brainer, and the concept is pretty simple to understand, but actually getting clarity is another matter altogether.
Getting clarity could take only a brief moment — if you’re one of those people who knows what they want. If you are, consider yourself blessed, because for a lot of people, it’s not that easy. It could take quite a while — maybe even years.
Why is it so difficult for people to get clarity on their dreams? Well, you might feel like your dream is not important or it’s unrealistic. You may have even been told it’s unspiritual.
When I was younger, my dream was to be a rock star. In fact, in my senior year of high school I was voted first to become a rock star. Well, for better or worse, that dream never came to fruition. However, I continued to have a dream to be a professional musician. That didn’t pan out either. I pretty much gave up hope on that dream.
Then, one day my brother in law gave me the book The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkenson. It challenged me once again to think about what my dream was. I was lost. I didn’t know what my dream was anymore. I looked around, though, at the guitars on my wall and thought about the college degree I had in classical guitar performance and I thought, is it any wonder what my dream still is?
Getting clarity is more about being true to your self, and that’s really hard to do. Sometimes we have to try a bunch of things before we discover, or rediscover, what it is we’re really passionate about.
Achieving Your Dreams: The WHY
Let’s say that you’ve accomplished step one — and that is you’ve decided what your dream is. You’ve gotten clarity on that.
Now you have decided to go after your dream, or are at least thinking seriously about it.
Something you’re going to encounter on the dream highway are detours, roadblocks, etc. — things that may make you want to give up on your dream, or at least — and this is more diabolical — not try as hard — put it on the back burner so to speak.
It’s at times like this that it helps to know what your WHY is, as Simon Sinek preaches in his book Start with Why. (Although, you can’t start with Why unless you know what the what is — like Dave Eggers’ book What Is the What? Wait, what? Never mind.)
Why are you going after this dream? This actually takes some digging. There’s probably several layers of why’s. For example, I’ve heard a lot of people say — and I myself have said — that their family or their children are their big why. Why is that? Why is that important to you? Go deeper.
I’ve been encouraged to go at least 7 layers deep on the question why. The first thing that comes to mind can often be superficial. The deeper you go into your why the closer you get to your core beliefs, and, as we know, it’s our core beliefs that ultimately control our actions.
For me, after sifting through a bunch of grandiose and noble why’s what I’ve discovered for myself — why I continue to pursue my dreams is because it’s what makes me feel most alive.
Achieving Your Dreams: The WHO
After getting clarity on what your dream is and why it means so much to you, a next step you may want to take is finding out who can help you achieve your dreams.
Here’s the thing — if you’ve already begun taking action on your dreams, quite often the right people just start showing up.
What can be difficult, though, is actually allowing them to help out.
For example, in 2018 I asked a friend if he would help me by simply listening to the songs I was recording for The Dream Highway and offer me his feedback. After the first listening session he asked if I was going to keep the pre-programmed drum loops I was using, or if I was going to have somebody actually playing drums on my songs.
I told him that I would love to have a real person playing drums on my songs, but I didn’t know anyone who had an electronic drum kit that they could bring to my studio. And, even if I did, I told him that I didn’t think I could afford to pay anybody for their services.
To my surprise, he told me that he had a set of electronic drums and that he would be more than happy to play drums on my songs if all he got out of it was a cup of coffee.
I was blown away by his offer, and I accepted it, though it was difficult to swallow my pride and allow him to come to my studio and serve me for no charge.
In addition to my drummer friend, I certainly would not have been able to achieve my dream of releasing my album The Dream Highway in 2018 if it weren’t for the support of my family, my life coach and my music marketing coach.
My question for you is, “Who will you have helping you achieve your dreams this year?”
These sections are also available as “Chirps” (micro-podcasts)…
Achieving Your Dreams: Part 1 of 4 — Introduction
Achieve Your Dreams — Part 2 of 4: The WHAT