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You have pulled yourself away from the dream killers, unintentional or not. You have carefully put your dreams in your mind like a seed that is ready to grow and to expand and live.
You know when someone may want to steal your dreams away- not because they don’t love you, but because they do love you. They say, “Please be realistic and reasonable about what you want”. They don’t want you to get hurt. They want to help you, but they also don’t want you to get too carried away, because if you dream something and it doesn’t come true you will be hurt. Of course, there are many people who think to themselves, “I should think big and when I get less than the big dream, I will be happy with that smaller slice of the pie, even though it is not the whole thing. I can’t be x, because I am y.” This is a very valid reason that you give yourself for why you can’t be successful. You know what you should do, and you don’t.
I guess it would be fair to say that some people have a dream all of their lives that never comes true, and it would also be fair to say some of us have almost all of our dreams come true. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.
Of course, dreams come in different sizes: the big ones, the medium ones, the small ones, and everywhere in between.
So many of us dream our dreams and have no intention of making them our reality. We would be happy with just a small part of our dreams coming true and having some of our dreams happen, whether they are big or small dreams.
We dream of a better life, and then we go back to what we were doing, leaving our dreams behind. Why do we want a better life but then not try to get it? If we know something is going to be good for us, why don’t we do it? I dream of success, so why don’t I get success?
Sometimes we don’t know that our dreams could come true. Throughout life sometimes people who we have respect for, such as teachers, coaches and parents, unwittingly smash all hope of us ever becoming something we have a burning desire to be that they just don’t see. Where is this burning desire? If just one person said to go for it, would we? Is all we need just one person to change our life? Or do we just need to believe in ourselves to make something happen for us? Yes, and I am telling you that one person - you - can make your dreams happen.
I was at a place this week where people were working on swinging. You know, the circus kind- high wires, people hanging upside down to catch people from the other swing that let go of their swing and trying to grab the hands of someone swinging upside down, and then letting go and catching the swing they just left to go back to where they started. You have seen this on TV, or at the circus, and it seems so easy when you see it done by professionals.
It is not easy, and I did not “fly”- which is what they call this high wire swinging. The people there were intense, but nine out of ten times they didn’t get caught, or they didn’t make it back to their swing.
And then they would talk to each other and the coach about what they needed to do to make it happen.
One lady was talking to another about visualizing. Now I don’t know about swinging, but give me a conversation about visualizing and I am there.
So my interest was sparked and I listened with great care to the group that was talking. They were asking each other “At night are you visualizing yourself getting caught by the other trapeze artist and making it back to your swing?” And one person said they didn’t have the time. And another person said, “I’m too tired to visualize by the time I am ready to go to bed.”
The concept I was getting was that they knew that visualization worked, but they still weren’t using visualization techniques. Instead, they went to bed thinking any dreams of exhaustion that came into their heads. How would these dreams of exhaustion affect them in the future, or even the next day?
Now this was voluntary swinging; you had to pay to get in, you had to buy your own belt, and many of them had their names engraved on their belts. Except for the instructors and the catchers, I guessed none of them expected to be in the circus,. They did this swinging for fun.
They knew seeing themselves do this was going to help them be better at what they were passionate about. So why didn’t they do something that could have helped them reach their goals and achieve their dreams?
They were too tired? I don’t get it. You want something and you don’t do everything that you need to do to get it?
You know that the human body is an amazing thing, and you can mistreat it and do horrible things to it, yet if you give it some love it will love you back. Do we dream of early death, and if so why do we do this? Perhaps we don’t dream of dying, but maybe we do, because we aren’t achieving our dreams.
Why do we let ourselves go physically and mentally? When we know that with very little effort we can be great, we don’t even believe in our own dreams anymore. We have been snuffed in the dream category. Why does this happen? Why don’t we believe in our own life?
What dreams do you have that can’t be fulfilled?
How many of us have been told “You can’t do that.” “We do it this way.” “I learned it this way, it must be right, so you do it this way too.” How many of us have had our dreams ripped away from us by people that are supposed to teach and guide us?
We don’t think for ourselves, “last week I heard that I am Catholic, I am Jewish, I am this or that.” Did that happen to you, or did you learn that from your parents? And having learned that from your parents you became what they wanted you to be instead of what you wanted to be. Now don’t misunderstand me, I don’t care if you want to be pink, yellow, green or anything else as long as you have thought about what you want to be, and not what someone else wants you to be.
So do we hold on to a dream until we die, never to have it fulfilled, or do we toss our dreams away and lower our expectations to what is given to us, heaven forbid we dream of something more or different. Have we been shamed to have our dreams kept secret, so only we know and feel the torture of never being able to express ourselves to anyone? Our dreams becoming little dirty secrets that we keep to ourselves because we don’t want people telling us we can’t, that we are silly, or that we are stupid for wanting a dream that could never be a reality according to someone else? Why do we succumb to someone else’s dreams for ourselves instead of reaching for our own?
How many of us are holding our most wanted desires inside of us, never to express what we want in our life, never to make our dreams come true?
When you give up on a dream is up to you. But if you want to make your dreams a reality, there is a way.
I was speaking to a psychologist not to long ago, someone that I respect and admire. I asked him when he tells children that they can’t do something. I said, “What if a child comes up to you and says, ’I want to be President of the United States.’ Do you tell them that in over 230 years there have been only 43 presidents, so how do they expect to become President of the United States? Or do you encourage them and let them go, only to find disappointment later”. Sure someone will be President, but it might be harder than winning the lottery, so most of the children that want to be President of the United States are going to be disappointed, along with some politicians that we know.
So someone might have this big dream and never achieve it.
How about winning a Super Bowl, or a World Series? Or the many other things that people have wanted and not gotten?
Well, there are some things that we might never achieve. Yet there are many others that we might.
How about world peace? That is the joke about the Miss USA pageant, the contestants all want world peace (See Sandra Bullock). How about a world without hunger? How about a world that survives for future generations? What is possible and what is not? What is a dream?
Martin Luther King had a dream. Mahatma Gandhi had a dream.
Albert Schweitzer, Abraham Lincoln, Jonas Salk, and Neville Bonner all made a difference.
People we don’t know have made a difference too. You and me, ordinary people have made a difference in this world.
And what do you dream for?
And when do you give up the dream? None of these people did, even against great odds.
What dream do you dream, what dream do you make a goal? What dream do you give up on? What dream becomes broken, and what heartache will we endure? You can have the dreams that you want. Will it be easy? Maybe, maybe not, but you can change your dreams into goals and work for them. And when the Dream Killers come around you must slay them and pay them no heed, for they have had their dreams broken and are negative, and do not give us hope as a people.
We must pull out our Dream Killer kits, and make sure that what we are doing is for us right now. What we think of now is what we will be in the future. So if we think failure now, don’t you think that we will have failure in the future? Of course, we are predicating our own future.
It is sad, but true. There are the negative, the evil, and the bad among us, and they would like to have influence on the world around them. They will help you kill your dreams, and make sure those dreams are not turned into goals. And when one of your dreams does not come true they will say “I told you so,” and try to kill other dreams that you may have.
You dream every night, and you can have many dreams in your life. It is for you to pick the ones that you want and to move forward. You can turn these dreams into the goals and reality that you want.
No, not all of our dreams come true, but you can have many of the dreams that you want. Do not give up, or give in. You are a special person, and when you look to the sky, see the stars that are your dreams and they can be yours.
Being afraid to make your dreams come true means you are not taking full advantage of being alive, and what could be worse than that? You have such a short time on earth, why wouldn’t you do things that will make you happy, make you fulfilled? Why would you be less than you think you can be? Fear challenges us to live our life the way that we want to.
We can go crazy with all of the what-ifs. “I have to save for this or that,” “What if this happens to us,” and “What if... ” and “What if... ” and “What if.” I could throw up just thinking about people being what-ifed to death.
They’re sitting there saying, “Let’s make sure there aren’t any dreams out there, let’s make sure we control the people around us, let’s make sure no one does anything that we don’t think they can do.”
We are going to have this and that in life; well I am here to tell you to go for it.
Run for the gold, turn those dreams into goals, and then visualize yourself doing what you are dreaming of.
You have to love yourself first and everyone around you second if you are going to make your dreams come true. Is this selfish? I don’t think so, because how can you make anyone else’s life wonderful if your own life is not.
Why do we want to kill the dreams that surround us?
And don’t think there is just one dream. We can dream many dreams and make many of them happen for us.
Success is the accomplishment of things that we want to accomplish; not what someone else wants us to accomplish. And we can have these dreams in the greatest country in the world today.
A century ago, if you were born into a family of bakers then you became a baker; the family of candlestick makers and you became a candlestick maker. You were what your parents were, you were born into a class of society that you could not get out of. You didn’t have the control over your life that you have now in America. If you are born to someone in the slums, you have the opportunity to become great in America, and if you are born in wealthy suburbs in America you have the opportunity to go live in the slums. Today we have the opportunity to make our life any way that we want. I know I have worked to make my life what I want it to be, and not what someone else thinks it should be.
When I was in the public school system in a small mid-west town, I don’t think anyone said “that little Stevie Jones, he is going to be a big hit and make it big in Los Angeles; develop a philosophy company right there in Beverly Hills, California.”
But what if I didn’t dare to dream the dream for myself, and dreamed instead the dream of those around me?
We have all had some success in our lives that we can transform into future successes. Why do we dwell on the negative in our life instead of the positive? “Oh jeez I should have, could have, would have... ” Now, learn how to make your dreams your reality. It can happen if you want it to happen. You have the formulas that we have given you for greater personal success, you have the freedom and God’s gift to be what you want to be.
Why ever give up on a dream?
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