The Vision

Hey! Good to see you again. Before I get started with today’s post, I should let you know a few things. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t take too long.

I’m worried about this whole “living my dream” thing. In fact, sometimes I think about it late into the night, and I get scared. Sometimes I shake a little. That’s how nervous all this makes me. As silly as it sounds, I even get anxious over this little inconsequential blog. But I suppose that’s just the way I am, ha ha. However—and this is important—the fear actually confirms that I’m on the right track. Here’s one of my favorite quotes: “if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.” And sometimes, all my dreams downright terrify me…yet, it’s that terror that drives me to keep going. I’ll probably make a longer post in the future about this quote and how much it has transformed me.

But anyway: back to the worry and fear. See, I’m afraid that I won’t get a following, you know? I’m worried that no one at all is interested in what I have to say. But, I have a plan. I know that it’s going to take a lot of hard work and elbow grease for this little blog to attract some followers, and I think the best way to draw ‘em in is to post quality content, every day. So, that’s one of my new goals: every day, I am going to post something of quality. It might be a review of a neat gizmo I bought, or it might be something inspirational. It might be some artwork I made, or—once my tripod comes in—it might be a video of me performing a song. Whatever the case, I know that if I post quality content every day, eventually people will find me and follow me, and hopefully I can make someone’s life a tad more interesting.

 

“If you build it, they will come.” Right? Right. Sounds good to me.

Okay! So, now that I’ve established that, it’s time for today’s post.

Recently, I purchased a book for my Kindle Fire called The Type-Z Guide to Success: A Lazy Person’s Manifesto to Wealth and Fulfillment by Marc Allen, author of The Millionaire Course. In the near future, I will post a full review, but for now, I’d like to address a specific exercise Allen describes in his book that has particularly impacted me in a positive way. In The Type-Z Guide to Success, Allen details the four-step process that has enabled him to succeed. The steps are 1) Dream, 2) Imagine, 3) Believe, and 4) Create. The exercise that I will be sharing today is outlined in the first step of the process.

This exercise is called the “Ideal Scene.” The instructions are pretty simple: get out a piece of paper (or, if you’re like me, open a new Word document) and describe your life in five years if everything you could possibly want has gone your way. That’s it. Spend a paragraph or two outlining your future home, family, career, car, and whatever other achievements you can think of.

Now, as I’ve mentioned earlier, there are a lot of fears and doubts scuttling around in my brain. And almost as soon as I began typing my own ideal scene, they all began saying “no, you can’t, that’s a stupid dream, you’ll never make it, it’s impossible,” ad nauseam. They almost stopped me, too.

But, see, here’s the thing: I have spent way too much of my life listening to those damn voices, and you know what I have to show for it? A big fat load of nothing, that’s what. And as those voices were clamoring for me to give up, that quote came back to me: “if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.” I repeated that quote to myself, and for once, all the voices shut up. A few minutes later, my ideal life was summed up in a couple of paragraphs.

I won’t share my ideal life here. Not yet. But let me tell you something: I read that document every day, and every single time, I am filled with such inspiration and passion that I can hardly contain it. See, before I had sat down and typed out everything I wanted—everything, not just the reasonable stuff—I was in a sort of rut. I had a vague idea of what I wanted, but I lacked the jump start I needed to get going. Now, however, I just have to reread that page on my computer and I am supercharged with energy. Something about seeing my dreams typed out in front of me was just…moving. That’s the best word for it. Honestly, that one little exercise is what gave me the boost to actually get this blog out of fantasy land and into the real world.

So, the takeaway from today’s post is simply this: try the “Ideal Life” exercise (be sure to ignore any negative voices, because what have they ever done for you, hm?) and see if it changes the way you think about your dreams. Maybe—hopefully—it will inspire you and revitalize you just as it has done for me. Let me know how it works out! That comment box down there is all yours!