Recently I posted 7 steps to achieve your dreams. I love helping people attain their God-given visions.
It occurred to me that there may be an additional post needed.
The fact is that more people will look back on their life and wish they had done more with their life than they did.
I heard someone once say something like, “If you’re not careful, your “hope to do’s” will become your “wish I had’s”. I have many of those areas in my life. I want the next phase of my life to be different.
Here are 7 reasons you may not be achieving your dreams:
You have no dreams – You may have some but you’ve never recorded them. You never set some tangible goals that get you closer to your dreams. Only then can you analyze them and organize them into reachable and attainable dreams.
You have no plan – A dream without a plan is just a dream. A dream with a plan is an avenue to success. You can’t “work the plan” if you never wrote one.
You need accountability – We were designed for relationships. Sometimes knowing someone is going to hold you accountable is enough incentive to follow through. Give a few people the freedom to challenge you to work the plan.
You are afraid to share the load – If you are trying alone for fear of sharing your dream, you’ll also have no one with whom you can really share the victory. Sharing the load builds synergy, makes a stronger effort, and keeps your ego from sidelining your progress.
You’ve given up – You may have had a set back and now you’re afraid to try again. Successful dreamers are willing to get up after a fall, knowing they will be stronger and better equipped the next time.
You aren’t willing to take a risk – Fear can sometimes be a powerful motivator, but most of the time it’s one of our biggest stumbling block. Some of the best moments of your life are hidden in your fears. Risk-taking and dreaming go hand-in-hand. If the dream requires no risk, it isn’t much of a dream.
You never got started – Every road to success begins with one step. If you don’t start, you’ll certainly never finish. What step do you need to take?
Are any of these your reason for not achieving your dreams? What would you add to my list?
Be sure to read 7 Steps to Achieving Your Dreams
There are some preexisting conditions to fulfilling one's dreams.
A) A sociopolitical milieu favorable to your dream. My family and I have gone to many areas in Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Africa where there is simply no hope for many people to fulfill many kinds of dreams.
B) Unless your dream is to go hide in the wilderness somewhere by yourself, you need other people to buy into your dream. You don't need everyone to buy into your dream; you just need the right people to buy into your dream. There are many people who lack the social skills necessary to sell their dream to the right people. If you want to start a business but can't sell your product, especially to whoever you hope to front the capital, your business will fail if it ever gets off the ground. You need a salesman, but you need to sell it to the salesman first. If you aren't gifted in that area, you don't stand a very good chance.
C) Divine approval. True Christian pastors don't call themselves although they react to the call of God in an expressly active way. Many there are who achieve the office of pastor who are not truly called, but in order to be a true Christian pastor, a gift of God to his church, it's a necessity. But that's not the only instance. Inasmuch as God orchestrates things like nations going against other nations, you might approach a dream with all the other things in place, but then as the events of present history unfold, your nation is judged by God and destroyed by another nation. Some of the people we have contact with in the Middle East have been in this situation recently.
So these necessary things may be reasons why you may not be achieving your dream.
I definitely believe written goals will speed the process of achieving your dreams.
Yes, Absolutely!
That's a great point Jeff. An earlier comment by Glen encouraged another post and this point is in it. Thanks for strengthening that post.
Been there… done that…referring to each of the reasons above. Pursuing our dreams is more of a marathon than a sprint…and there are lots of obstacles to overcome.
One thought I might add to the list: "You need a new dream." Perhaps you've accomplished a dream (way to go!), and now you're left with the "now what" feeling. Perhaps the dream you've had is selfish or misdirected. You need a new dream. It's time to seek God's direction again, and dream a new dream.
All of these points apply to me, too. it’s as though I have decided that since I haven’t had any significant success so far in my life, now in my mid-40s there is no chance of ever amounting to anything, so why even think about trying.
And it’s not that I don’t want to do anything, but there are far too many things I’m interested in doing. I blogged about it a like, calling it a “paralysis of options”. Never having had a significant success, why try something new that will just be another brick in the wall of failure?
With that being said, I am stupidly participating in NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month), not with the idea I can actually write a novel, but to commit to writing something every day. I have an idea for a bunch of stories of the history for an alien race.if I get one of these stories recorded during the month, I will consider it a smashing success.
Thanks for your honesty Jack.
Twitter: Glengaugh
says:
I'm afraid each of these apply to me, though at one time I felt I was on track to achieving dreams. Getting unstuck is a difficult task, but I appreciate the affirmation from this post and the 7 steps to achieving your dream post as well.
Glen thanks for this comment. Your mention of being stuck triggers another blog post in my mind. I appreciate the inspiration.