How to make your dreams come true

I just had a dream come true. A group of amazingly wonderful women gave me their time, money and attention for three days to teach them how to use my Girls Leadership curriculum. This workshop I call Launching Girl Leaders, was held in Austin, Texas a fun city where folks from all over the country came who share my passion for teaching social & emotional leadership skills to girls. I feel so blessed, so proud of myself, but also kind of amazed that I actually pulled this off.

When I started life coach training, there were a lot of questions like “What would you dream if you knew you could not fail?” or “What would you do with your life if no one was watching” and “Name your top 5 wildly improbable goals.” I had a really hard time with this. I wasn’t a “dream big” kinda gal. As I broke through some of these mental blocks, my hearts desire seemed to center around teaching classes to other women and girls, traveling to speak, and one that felt really bold to me was “being paid to travel”. I know these may not be your dreams, but since I’m sitting in the Austin airport reflecting, I figure I’ll write down how I made my dream come true so that I’ll remember for next time. Did you make your dreams come true by following a similar path? How can you use these to help you move towards your next adventure?

Here is my 5 step plan to making YOUR dreams come true.

1. Figure out what YOU want? If you are going to spend your life working towards a goal, you better make sure it’s the right goal for YOU. If you think about a generic goal like being famous, rich, or living on a tropical island, get more specific. Why do you want these things? What would you do once you got it? Notice whenever you feel jealousy. Notice whenever you fall in love with a book, a movie, a person, a job. These are all important signs.
2. Look around you, what do you see? Computer? phone? paper? chair? pencil? clothes? Everything you see began in someone’s imagination. When we are kids, we are really good at imagining things so clearly they feel like reality. We put on that tiara and heels and we ARE a princess. We crawl under the table and bark, we ARE a dog. The older we get, the more we use our imaginations to picture bad things happening. We worry, we anticipate and prepare for the worst. Imaginations are very powerful so make sure you are using it on the things you WANT to have happen, not on the things you DON’T WANT.
3. Expect fear and resistance to come. Every time we try and grow in a new and positive directions, fear and resistance will come along for the ride. I did lots of crying, hiding and feeling afraid. Trying to create something new outside our comfort zones is hard, especially if it’s something important to us and true to our essence. I could not have accomplished my dream without the help of a life coach, it’s a great stage to bring one on board.
4. Get clear on your “WHY” and make sure it’s achievable. I had to keep reminding myself that my reason for creating this event was to “grow a side of myself I’ve never grown before”. To create a workshop and host it in a new city, rent a conference room, serve food & drink, advertise to people who don’t know me, type up all my lessons, create binders and a workshop event that is worth the $500. price tag, was all new for me. When my goal is to GROWTH, I know that it’s achievable. I either get what I want, or I get an education. Make sure your WHY makes it impossible to fail.
5. Have more than one baby. In order to not let obstacles get in your way and bring you down, it helps to have more than one “baby” at a time. When you really want your dream to come true, we need to detach from the outcome and be happy with whatever happens. This is hard to do! If you are like most Moms, you poured a lot of time, attention and worry into your first born child but with your second, you found it easier to relax and enjoy him or her without stressing. Dreams are the same way, when we want something really badly, our energy gets clingy and needy, not the energy of success. When we have another baby or two to divert our attention, we don’t put so much of our identity, ego, and importance on this one dream coming true.