Who doesn’t love a great big idea?
We all love to fall in love with a big idea that will transform our life.
Often we follow the credo, “Follow Your Dreams!”
It’s fun to dream.
It’s fun to fantasize about what life will be like when a worthy goal is accomplished.
Just yesterday, I was finalizing travel details for a business conference I have in May in Arizona.
One of the first thoughts I had, when I thought about flying out to Arizona, is visiting the Grand Canyon.
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a chap I’ll call Paul who spent several years as a National Park employee at the Grand Canyon.
He shared with me a shocking statistic.
The average visitor to the Grand Canyon spends 10 minutes at the Grand Canyon.
Every year around five million people travel to the Grand Canyon, and they only stay there for 600 seconds.
I was absolutely astounded by this statistic.
Twenty-five years ago, I finished my second year of college and took a road trip from southeast Idaho to Phoenix, Arizona.
While I was planning that road trip, one idea came to my mind.
I’m going to visit the Grand Canyon.
As I looked further into the trip, I decided against it because the Grand Canyon was four hours out of the way for this road trip.
To this day, I still haven’t been to the Grand Canyon.
This is a classic example of having a dream, yet not taking the necessary actions to do the work to achieve the dream.
Now that I have a trip to visit Arizona again, I’m going to take three days to hike the ~23-mile rim to rim.
This time, I’m not going to let the opportunity to see the Grand Canyon slip through my hands because of some silly little excuse.
Now that I’ve got the vision to accomplish, I’m now going to move into the planning phase of making my dream of hiking the Grand Canyon a reality.
As I spent a bit more time thinking about my trip to the Grand Canyon, I told myself I’m not going to be one of those lousy people who only spend 10 minutes at the Grand Canyon.
Then I thought further about what I’d like to do to avoid being a few-minute visitor to the Grand Canyon.
I love hiking and looked into a few hikes at the Grand Canyon and finally decided I will do the ~23 mile Rim to Rim hike over three days.
Now my dream is becoming more concrete because I have a few more details about how to transform my dream into reality.
As I build out my plan, there are numerous details I have to consider such as:
- Flight plans to Arizona
- How I’m going to manage my work while I’m gone?
- Packing list for my backpack
- Where I’m going to stay while I’m at the Grand Canyon?
- What I’m going to eat
- What trails I’m going to take?
- How much water will I need?
- What clothes and equipment will I need to take with me?
- How am I going to get myself in shape for the hiking trip?
Plenty of details to consider.
However, if I get caught up in too many details at once, I probably will end up getting overwhelmed.
This is where I need to focus on simplifying the trip to the Grand Canyon as much as possible.
I’m a big fan of simplifying life as much as possible.
When things are simplified, they become less overwhelming.
Albert Einstein said, “Everything in life should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
The reason for me sharing with you my dream of hiking bliss through one of the world’s great national wonders is there are two vital elements to getting results.
The two vital components are
- Dream
- Action
Both of these vital components are interdependent.
The Dream without the action will remain a dream.
The Action without the dream will deliver minimal results.
The dream gives our actions focus on something worth achieving.
Now think about how you can apply this principle of the two vital components to your business.
What is a dream you have for your business this year?
Now spend some time throwing spaghetti against the wall by asking yourself the following question.
What do I need to do to accomplish that dream?
Just write everything down that comes to your mind.
Do not filter yourself during this phase.
There are no wrong answers.
You are simply using your powerful brain powers to come up with details to accomplish your dream.
Now spend some time and highlight the five most important items on your list.
Now its time to further refine your activity list.
What is the most important activity for you to perform to accomplish your dream?
This one thing now becomes what you focus on to get the results you desire.
The final step is to pick a deadline for your dream.
Without a deadline, you will put off accomplishing your dream.
It is simply too easy to let day to day life encroach on our dream and derail us from success.
Put that deadline in your calendar.
You may even want to grab a marker and write your dream down with the deadline in a place you will constantly see it.
Even better yet, create a vision board where you include pictures of your dream.
In my example, I will put pictures of the Grand Canyon on a piece of paper with my deadline so that I can be constantly reminded of what I’m striving to accomplish.
One of the great adventures in life is developing a dream and traveling the path to accomplishing that dream.
In the process of achieving our dreams, we become transformed by our journey.
Once we achieve our dream destination, we realize the transformation we underwent during the journey was much more valuable than the accomplishment of the dream.
Go out and achieve a new dream this year!
Oh, and one more thing…
If you’d like your interested in building your ideal business this year, send me an email at damon@idelamoneylife.com with the word DREAM in the subject line and I’ll get you the details.
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