SUNDAY'S FOOD FOR THOUGHT- CAN YOU CLEARLY SEE YOUR DREAM?

SUNDAY’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT- CLARITY FOR YOUR DREAM

Hello ladies and gentlemen. In today’s Sunday food for thought I want to share with you an important message on our dreams. Every single one of us have dreams that we wish someday they can become real. Our Creator has put a dream/task for every human being to accomplish and it is our responsibility to find out that has been given to us to do. John Maxwell, an internationally recognized leadership guru, speaker and author. In his book Put Your Dream to the test has analyzed the difference between a dreamer and someone who achieves a dream. It provides a step-by-step action plan that you can start using to see, own and reach your dream. In this book Dr. Maxwell teaches on how you can put your dream to test by asking yourself ten questions that will help you see it and seize it namely, the Ownership Question (Is my dream really my dream?), the Clarity Question (Do I clearly see my dream?), the Reality Question (Am I depending on factors within my control to achieve my dream?), the Passion Question (Does my dream compel me to follow it?), the Pathway Question (Do I have a strategy to reach my dream?), the People Question (Have I included the people I need to realize my dream?), the Cost Question (Am I willing to pay the price for my dream?), the Tenacity Question (Am I moving closer to my dream?), the Fulfillment Question (Does working toward my dream bring satisfaction?), the Significance Question (Does my dream benefit others?). But as of today I will deal on the clarity question as I share with you verbatim from this book. Read on.

IS YOUR DREAM IN FOCUS?

Do you clearly see your dream? A clear and compelling dream has rescued many a struggling organization. Dreams have given meaning and significance to the lives of many an individual. Every time in my life I accomplished anything significant, the dream was very clear to me beforehand. I knew what I was striving for.

If you want to accomplish a dream, you will be able to do so only when you see it clearly. You must define it before you can pursue it. Most people don’t do that. Their dream remains a dream- something fuzzy and unspecific. As a result, they never achieve it.

Pursuing a dream that isn’t clear would be like someone who loves cowboy movies launching out on a trip to the Western United States merely hoping to run into something interesting by driving in that direction. Instead, the person would need to turn that vague notion into specifics, saying something like, “I want to visit the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, then travel to Arizona to see the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, visit Old Tucson to see where they filmed Rio Bravo, my favorite Western, and see beautiful Monument Valley, where movies such as Stagecoach and Once upon a Time in the West were filmed.” Now that can be accomplished.

If you want to achieve your dream, you need to bring it into focus. As you work toward that, here are some things to keep in mind:

1.       A CLEAR DREAM MAKES A GENERAL IDEA VERY SPECIFIC

When I ask people to describe their dream, many of them stammer and stumble, trying to put into words a vague notion they’ve nurtured but never defined. A dream that isn’t clear won’t help you get anywhere.

What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to experience? What do you want to contribute? Who do you want to become? In other words, what does success look like for you? If you don’t define it, you won’t be able to achieve it.

It sounds overly simple, but a primary reason that most people don’t get what they want is that they don’t know what they want. They haven’t defined their dream in clear and compelling detail. As actor and author Ben Stein asserts, “The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.” 

Deciding what you want requires you to be specific and make your goals measurable. For example, take a look at these vague notions put into more specific form:

GENERAL IDEA                                                                                    SPECIFIC GOAL

I want to lose weight                                         I will weigh 185 pounds by June 1.

I need to treat employees better    I will honor someone at every Monday Staff meeting                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

I want to get out of debt                                   I will pay off all credit card balances by December 31

I’d like to learn a language.                                I will study Chinese one hour a day this year

I ought to get in shape.                                       I will swim for an hour everyday

I need to improve my leadership.                    I will read one leadership book every month.

A dream doesn’t have to be ephemeral. Even a really audacious one can be concrete. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy made a big dream concrete when he said, “This nation commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon.” Albert Siepert, former deputy director of launch operations at the Kennedy Space Center,  stated, “The reason that NASA has succeeded is because NASA had a clear-cut goal, and expressed its goal.” When you first begin to wonder about your potential and brainstorm your future, it’s good to let yourself go and think big. But when it’s time to start making your dream come true, you need to get specific.

 Being specific doesn’t necessarily mean having every little detail thought out before you move forward. That would be a mistake. The big idea needs to be clear. The rest unfolds as you move forward, and you make adjustments as you go. But you should try to be specific as you can about the overarching dream.

For years I have encouraged leaders to add value to their employees, build them up, and motivate them to help them succeed. Adding value to people is a natural gift for me. But it’s not for many people, and I could see that some struggled with it. Because I longed to help others in this area, I realized I needed to be specific on the subject and write about it. The result was a book I wrote with Les Parrott titled 25 Ways to Win with People: How to Make Others Feel Like a Million Bucks.  It explains practices to help people add value to others. Now I’m not just encouraging people to add value; I’m helping them actually do it.

2.       A CLEAR DREAM DOESN’T BECOME CLEAR WITHOUT EFFORT

It doesn’t take much effort to let your mind drift and dream. However, it takes great effort to set your mind to the task of developing a clear and compelling dream. Mike Hyatt says that when he took his retreat to get a clear vision for his division, he went to a solitary place with just a pen and journal. He began the process by describing in writing the current reality he was facing. He was brutally honest, writing down everything he didn’t like. Only then did he write out in detail what he wanted to see happen in the future- not just as a vague dream of success or improvement. He even wrote it in the present tense to make the dream more concrete and credible.

Take the effort to bring clarity to your dream using your own tools and method. If you’re like Mike, you can go away to a cabin with nothing but pen and paper. I, on the other hand, need starters to get me thinking in the right direction. Maybe they can help you as well. Here are some essentials I bring to the task of clarifying my dream…..

A.      Questions. For me the whole process begins with questions I must ask myself. The dream is always rooted in the dreamer, in his or her experiences, circumstances, talents, and opportunities. I ask;

What am I feeling? - What are my emotions telling me?

What am I sensing? - What is my intuition telling me?

What am I seeing? - What is happening around me?

What am I hearing? - What are others saying?

What am I thinking? - What do my intellect and common sense say?

If I can get a good sense of where I am, what I know, and what I want, I’m on my way to clarifying my dream.

B.      Resources. I rarely try to think, create, or dream in a vacuum. I’m a firm believer in tools that can help me. Sometimes that means reading a book, listening to a message on CD, watching a movie, or reading quotations. Other times it means having a photograph or an object in front of me to help me dream. More than once I’ve kept a photograph on the desk in my office for a year or longer to help me see a dream more clearly.

C.      Experiences.  Years ago when my dream was to build an influential church in America, I reinforced and clarified that vision by visiting congregations around the country that were already influential. I have also traveled to historic areas and visited the home of one of my heroes to inspire me. Such experiences help me dream bigger and with greater clarity.

D.      People. When I dream, I think about people who have already been where I want to go. For three years I made appointments with leaders who were already doing what I dreamed of so that I could gain insight from them. Those interactions gave me confidence, inspired me to dream bigger, and sharpened the picture of my dream. Listening to people share the details of their journey can sometimes help you discover the details of yours.

If you have already discovered a process for bringing clarity to your dream, then use that. If you haven’t, try mine. Or do as Mike Hyatt did. But however you approach the task, remember this; it’s usually a process. A clear picture of a dream may come to you all at once, in lightning bolt fashion, but for most people it doesn’t work that way. Most people need to keep working at it, clarifying it, redrawing it. If the process is difficult, that’s no reason to give up. In fact, if it’s too easy, maybe you’re not dreaming big enough. Just keep working at it because a clear dream is worth fighting for.

3.       A CLEAR DREAM AFFIRMS YOUR PURPOSE

If you’ve answered the Ownership Question to verify that your dream really is your dream, then working to clarify your dream should reinforce the work you’ve already done. Bringing your dream into focus should confirm the sense that you are going in the right direction, and it should strengthen your sense of purpose.

I’ve found this to be true in my life. In my effort to clarify my dream, I discovered that the more clearly I saw my dream, the more clearly I was able to see my purpose. That is true, I believe, because a person’s dream and purpose are intertwined. God designs us to want to do what we are most capable of doing. Because of this, when I visited churches that were making an impact, something resonated within me. I felt that I belonged in such places. And when I interviewed the successful leaders in these churches, I sensed that I could become one too. In a way, it was an odd situation. I was fanning the flames of my imagination, making me dream even bigger, and at the same time it confirmed the reality that I was on the right track. I could see a picture of my dream, and I could see myself in the picture.

When your dream and your purpose are aligned, you know it. That was true for filmmaker Steven Spielberg. When he was in high school, he dreamed of directing movies. “I want to be a director,” he told his father, Arnold.

“Well,” his father told him, “if you want to be a director, you’ve got to start at the bottom; you’ve got to be a gofer and work your way up.”

“No, Dad,” the younger Spielberg replied. “The first picture I do, I’m going to be a director.” And he was.

“That blew my mind,” his father says. “That takes guts.” Arnold Spielberg was so impressed with his son’s ambition and confidence, he bankrolled Steven’s first feature film, Firelight, a science fiction thriller that premiered at a little movie house in Phoenix, Arizona. During the making of the film, the young Spielberg told his collaborators, “I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction.” That’s not a bad description of what he has become, having produced or directed Jurassic Park, Men in Black, Transformers, ET, Minority Report, Back to the Future, Gremlins, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and other science fiction films. Spielberg’s dream was clear, and the power of that clarity helped him achieve it.

As you put your dream to the test and seek to bring clarity to it, having your dream and purpose aligned will change your life. Why? Because it will make clear why you’re here on this earth. If you don’t sense that alignment and strengthening of purpose, you might need to return to the Ownership Question and make sure your dream is really your dream.

That’s all for today ladies and gentlemen, I believe it will be of great help to you as you try to seek clarity in your dream and accomplish everything you have dreamed about. ALL THE BEST AND GOD BLESS YOU.

Ps. Whoever wants to guest post in this blog, you can check up on me via email address bashworker@gmail.com.