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Living Your Dreams: A Neuroscience Approach to Achieving Goals

Here are some tips on your ability to not only dream, but to carry them to success.

1.  Do your dreams stir your passion and challenge your talents and abilities?

If your dreams are just a set of attainable goals, they do not qualify as dreams. Ask yourself the following question to determine the difference between the two.

Are your dreams just within your perceived realm of possibility, or are they expanding it?

There are thousands of athletes and hundreds of teams that have a winning regular season, but until they win that championship game, they are goal achievers, not dream makers.  “Good enough” gets in the way of greatness.  Of course, we all need goals that are attainable, measurable, and achievable. They build strength, confidence, character and positive experience. But, extraordinary possibilities require lofty thinking and imagination.

2.  Make sure your dreams are so compelling that they keep you awake at night!

Shakespeare wrote a great line for Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Concentrate on how your life is and how it could be. If you waste time looking back at what it wasn’t, you’re not noticing the new opportunities all around you. It’s an extraordinarily simple concept, but extraordinarily difficult for some people to act on.

What in life have you achieved by accident?

Yes, there are wonderful instances of serendipity – stumbling across something delightful and unexpected. That’s what makes each day a joyous adventure. However, whatever your objectives have been – learning to walk, read, driving a car, or using the newest digital device – chances are that you visualized yourself achieving them. You intended to achieve those things and you were willing to put time and effort into these goals.

3.  Work within your strengths.

There is a difference between your talents and your strengths. Talents are your inborn gifts and abilities – what you do well. Strengths are qualities like courage, hope, resilience, and integrity – how you do well.

Talents without strengths are like rocket ships without fuel; they won’t get off the ground and soar.

Where you aim determines what you hit!   As the saying goes, “Shoot for the moon,” then, if you miss, the stars aren’t bad as a backup. Even if you end up hitting your own foot (as I often do), at least you’ve activated your launch equipment.

The importance of your perceptions of your own courage and competence cannot be underestimated. Faulty judgment can stop you before you start. You have the talent; now work on your strengths to carry you to your dreams!

4.  Decide how. Do it now.

Following your dreams is not a philosophical mindset, it is a practical outlet. Stop thinking and start doing.

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