Your Dreams Will Never Materialize If You Skip These 3 Steps

I’ve wasted years of my life researching and “preparing” for the future I want some day. The problem? That future will never arrive. Now is all we have. Instead of hoping I’ll catch up with my future self eventually, I need to do these three things to bring her into the present.

1. Deliberate Evaluation

Sometimes we dream the wrong dream. I’m not saying that we dream too big or reach too high. What I’m saying is that we can get caught up in dreaming someone else’s dream as if it’s our own.

Families and culture are notorious for impregnating us with dreams that aren’t our own, convincing us that we will find happiness in that high powered job, or that certain kind of partner, or that (fill in the blank).

Before reaching for our dreams, we must begin with awareness. We have to get still enough to tease apart the voices within us. Our true inner voice is likely screaming at us, demanding that we get onto the path towards our dreams. But so is that voice that’s telling us we desire someone else’s dream.

Teasing apart these two voices is paramount to our our success in arriving at our dreams, and more importantly our happiness.

Through this process of deliberate evaluation we may discover we were headed in the right direction all along, or that we need to take a detour towards our dreams. Regardless, the time spent blocking out all external input and listening to our inner voice is vital to our success.

2. Compassionate Awareness

Martha Beck, author of the book The Way Of Integrity, shares with readers that at the base of every single yearning we have, there are four deep desires: peace, freedom, joy, and love.

The liberating truth behind this is that peace, freedom, joy, and love are multidimensional desires. They are things that can be attained through a myriad of pathways and no two journeys to get there will be the same.

The challenge behind this truth is that there is no road map. We each must discover what it is that brings us closer to peace, freedom, joy and love. When we can get to the root of what we think our dreams will offer us in terms of these four universal yearnings, our path to that end expands.

We no longer need to be married to a singular path in the direction of our dream career, or our desired relationship status. It becomes less about the how and more about the why. When we can shift our focus on the deeper desire we have in reaching our dreams, the possibilities are limitless.

3. Faithful Action

Dreams make us feel all gooey inside. They’re inspiring and exciting. But just like actions speak louder than words, actions also speak louder than dreams.

We can want something till we’re blue in the face, but it isn’t until we take that first step that our future will catch up with us.

We all know this. It is practically physics. Doing research, watching YouTube videos, Googling others who have attained what you want. None of this is action and if we’re not careful, it can convince us that we’ve already nearly reached our dreams.

Instead of researching dreams, act on them. Just make sure they’re your dreams and not someone else’s.

Why Write What’s Already Been Said 1,000 Different Ways?

I know nothing I said here is new. It’s been packaged and repackaged in a thousand different ways. So you may ask, “why write it at all?” To which I say,

For one simple reason: We need to reevaluate what our dreams look like and how we achieve them. So many of our dreams center around the things we believe will get us closer to happiness. Whether it’s a promotion, higher social status, or financial freedom, these are all worldly desires.

I’ve read so many stories about financially successful people who achieve their wildest career dreams or financial dreams yet feel dead inside. I’ve read other stories about financially free people who travel the world without a 9–5 job who truly believe they’ve found happiness. Still, I wonder if they’ve simply replaced that quest for more stuff with a quest for more experiences.

While an emphasis on more experiences may be a step in the right direction, we still can’t seem to accept that all dreams point to the same non-materialistic ends: peace, joy, freedom and love. In their very nature, these yearnings have nothing to do with anything external. They aren’t about collecting stuff, status, financial freedom, or even experiences. They’re about finding opportunities to become more and more at peace with who we are and what we can contribute to this world while we’re here.

It may be sad to think of but the truth is we don’t take our memories of places we’ve been, our dreams and whether or not we achieved them, our status, or our material possessions. We only take the love we shared and our sense of inner peace and contentment because of how well we knew ourselves and whether we left this world a little bit better than we found it.

Racing in the direction of our dreams isn’t inherently bad. I have worldly dreams just like most, and chasing them can be good fun. But the point I’m trying to make here is this:

If our goal is to find happiness and lasting peace, external gratification isn’t the little red wagon that will get us there. We won’t feel lasting peace by dreaming dreams that have been passed down by previous generations. It won’t be at the bottom of a jar of dreams imposed upon us by our culture. We can’t discover true happiness through dreams that only benefit ourselves, or that focus on the mortal world. We have to think bigger, universal, everlasting. We have to choose the right little red wagon to pull.

As Ekhart Tolle said, “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

Hi there! I’m Anon, writer, educator, wife, mom, expat, adoptee, and so much more. I write about creativity, family life, mental health, and the love between a woman and food, among other things.

My hope is to shed some light on the opportunities we have to awaken a deep sense of peace from within and to then use that inner peace to make the world more whole.

If you want to stay up to date with my latest posts, here and on my blog, subscribe here. Thanks so much for your support. ~ Anon

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Previously Published on medium

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