Dream On, It’s The Only Life You Have So Live It Fully
I hope you’ve been applying some of the tips here and have been making progress towards your dreams and goals.
“When you get there, there is no there. But there will be a pool.” – David Zucker
This, and then next few posts, will make more sense when you’ve had a chance to live what we’ve been discussing over the past couple of months for a while.
In following the suggestions in those parts, you either have achieved your Dream, or are well on the way to achieving it.
The question arises, “What next?”
That’s what this edition is about. “There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it,” wrote Logan Pearsall Smith.
“Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”
Choose New A New Dream and Goal
“As Miss America, my goal is to bring peace to the entire world and then to get my own apartment.” Jay Leno
When your Dream is almost realized – but not quite – it’s time to choose another goal.
The goal may remain the same, but the quantifying factors are raised. The goal to conduct an orchestra remains intact, for example, but the yearly salary increases from $100,000 to $200,000.
Or, the goal may change entirely.
“Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties,” wrote Samuel Johnson, “passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.”
Just as the comfort zone knows no limits in keeping you from fulfilling your Dreams, it also has no limits on how much it can expand. Our goals may move from one area of life to another, or they may stay in the same area.
In 1980, Sting said, “Given the choice of friendship or success, I’d probably choose success.” He got it. In 1990, he chose again: “Friendship’s much more important to me [now] than what I thought success was.”
Now that you know that have been exposed to most of the techniques I work with, you now can be truly courageous and being to following your Dreams. Reread the past few month newsletters, they’ll make a lot more sense.
Do the exercises.
Choose another Dream.
Dream on!
Wealth Is What You Can Live Without
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” – Thoreau
When you tell most people, “Nothing outside yourself is going to make you happy; you must make yourself happy,” they nod approvingly, and more often than not think, “I’ll make myself happy when I have a new house, lover, job, meditation blanket, etc.”
The shock that takes place when someone realizes, “I have my Dream and I’m still not happy,” can be either depressing or enlightening. Depressing, if one thinks, “This was the wrong dream. I need to find the right dream – then I’ll be happy.” Enlightening, if someone says, “Maybe my happiness does depend on me,” and begins the journey.
“Not the fruit of experience,” wrote Walter Pater, “but experience itself, is the end.”
Robert Townsend said it for our generation: “Getting there isn’t half the fun – it’s all the fun.” Elizabeth Taylor has a needlepoint pillow in her living room. It reads: “It’s not the having, it’s the getting.”
What’s the true value of setting a goal and achieving it?
It’s not obtaining the goal, but what we learn about ourselves along the way. To get to our Dream we must be focused, disciplined, persevering, caring, worthy, excited, enthusiastic, and passionate.
What do we learn about ourselves?
How to be more focused, disciplined, persevering, caring, worthy, excited, enthusiastic, and passionate. Goals come and go, dreams fade, but these qualities travel with us wherever we go.
“There is no end. There is no beginning,” said Federico Fellini. “There is only the infinite passion of life.”
This is our true wealth – the riches we take with us, the joy we carry inside, the support we learn to give ourselves, and the self-loving that flows as a natural by-product of that support.
“There is only one success to be able to spend your life in your own way.” – Christopher Morley
To the degree we can live without the things of this world, we are wealthy. The key word in that sentence is “live.” I’m not talking about austerity or sacrifice. I’m talking about living.
When we know how easy it is to fulfill a Dream (easy compared to how impossible most people believe it to be), we know we can take it. Once we are free to take it, we are also free to leave it.
“You never know what is enough,” wrote Blake, “until you know what is more than enough.”
Do not, however, turn the idea that you can live without many things into just another wonderful sounding excuse for not pursuing your Dream. “The comfort zone hath power to assume a pleasing shape.”
Go fulfill a few Dreams.
Know you can do it.
Have fun.
Then decide what you can live without.
Is this madness?
Sure.
“You have everything but one thing,” Zorba the Greek told his young friend, “madness. A man needs a little madness or else – he never dares cut the rope and be free.”
