Alrighty then…let’s get into this whole idea that any of us can be successful and achieve our dreams, with a simple 4 step formula. I opened this up in the post Permanent Vacation, and I said that I would break out the 4 steps based on the great feedback that I was getting from all of you, so I’ll start by elaborating a bit on Step 1…
Before you can set out to achieve anything, you have to know what it is you are trying to achieve. That much makes sense, right? You also have to be very specific about the final outcome. You have to be able to picture an exact result in mind when you think about the accomplishment. That may sound a little tougher. But, it is crucial to your being successful.
Your mind is creative. The things you put into your mind begin the creative process. This works on all levels, from the most trivial to the most complex. If you feed your mind with negativity, guess what you will bring about? It’s a universal principle, so it works the same with everyone. Remember, “thoughts become things”, so all of that activity going on between your ears is a lot like the ingredients of a cosmic casserole being mixed together before it gets put into the oven of Your Life. What comes out of the oven are the results of what you have cooked up in your mind.
Let’s stick with the cooking analogy for a moment. If you have very specific directions for a particular dish that you want to cook, and you follow them to the letter, when you are finished you will very likely have the exact concoction you desire. If, however, you have no idea what you’re doing, and you just start throwing random ingredients in a bowl with no idea of how they will interact with each other…you mix them up and cook them for a certain amount of time with no regard as to how that will effect the final result…who knows what you’ll end up with?
If you’re not careful, and conscious of this principle as it pertains to YOU, then that’s exactly how your entire life will play out.
You will end up calling it chance, or circumstances beyond your control, or luck or fate. The truth is, if you had a specific idea of how you wanted your experience to unfold, you would be taking a major step toward achieving whatever you want to achieve in your life.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate” – Carl Jung
You need to take control of where you want to go. That’s really the bottom line. And the starting point is to clearly define what you want your life experience to be.
Start with this simple question, “If I could do exactly what I wanted to do…what would I be doing?”
For the time being, you need to put aside any and all limiting thoughts that may be swirling around your mind. Just let them go. Nothing is impossible.
So, are you doing what you want to be doing?
I’m not going to assume anything about you because we are all unique individuals with unique goals. But I would guess that there is a great likelihood you are not living the life of your dreams or doing the things you want to do on a daily basis, right now. And if that’s so, and you can have control over it, then the next obvious question becomes, “Why not?”
Maybe you find yourself in a situation similar to the one that Charles Bukowski describes below;
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed – there is naturally a scatological dimension to thins – brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
This was a a transforming question for me. Mostly because I couldn’t come up with any logical, reasonable, or remotely sane answer to it. Yet, it was exactly what I, and a vast majority of other people were doing with our time and our energy every single day.
By the way, I ran across that Charles Bukowski quote in the book Your Portable Empire by Pat O’Bryan, which I highly recommend to you if your goal in life is to have the time and the freedom to do whatever you want to do. That book is truly what inspired me to start writing, start dreaming, and start living life the way that I want to live it.
This blog, which hopefully has become a really wonderful place for you to visit and will serve as a source of inspiration for you for years to come, and the books that I am writing, and the projects that I am working on, are all part of me beginning to live that life of my dreams.
But enough about me…
The first think you need to do is get totally clear on what it is you want to accomplish. Then you need to write that down. This is now your life’s goal.
It may be something like, “I want to work from home so that I can spend more time with my family”, or “I want to teach people how to make their own crafts”, or “I want to be the owner of a successful gift shop” or “I want to write books that help people achieve their dreams”…whatever it is, look inside yourself and figure out what you are truly the most passionate about and what is it that you would do if you have no constraints, no obstacles, and no limitations.
Once you have done this, you have successfully taken the first step toward achievement! You don’t need to run out and tell anyone, they would likely just bring you back to the Fifteen Reasons Why You Can’t Do Something Fun and Still Make a Living or some form of that mindset. Just keep it to yourself. You want to be able to access all of your imagination, and inner strength, and you want to start acting in an inspired manner. I’ll get into all that in the next few posts, but for now just get really, really clear about your goal.
Stay tuned.
