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Dreams, ambitions, goals, aspiration, hope… they are the drive to keep us developing and evolving in life, both personally and professionally. One dreams big and makes that a meaning of life to achieve and live the dream life. Walt Disney quoted, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” As he rightly quoted, it does take a lot of courage for one to chase their dreams and to say, ‘Yes I can get there one fine day’. To get there however would not be a very easy route. There should be a mental map that we need to follow to reach our destination (our dream).

Some of the aspects that we could keep in mind to create our own route to our dreams could be:

1. Knowing What one Wants: “You have to dream before your dreams can come true.”, quotes Dr Abdul kalam. We need to first know what we want to be and where we want to reach. We need to Explore our strengths and talents and dream of contributing to our fields of interest through these assets.

2. Believing in Dreams and Following Intuition: There could be times that we all dream big and see ourselves in the best form we aspire to be… such as maybe get a job in a dream company such as Microsoft or Google, or get into teaching in a renowned university or maybe lose a good amount of weight and then we might think, ‘okay can i really get there?’. This thought hinders us from working towards our dreams. It’s always the best option to be positive about ourselves and appreciative of what we have and how our possessions can help us reach our big dreams. We need to be passionate about our interest and work towards growing and developing in the field… Of course we should keep in mind how real our dream is, for instance one can not be positive about a dream of becoming ‘Superman’ or ‘Spider-man’ 😛

3. Taking Help and Helping Others: There is a time in everyone’s life where we are new to the field that we aspire to one fine day shine in. We could be freshly out of college, or newly shifted to a place or even might want to consider change of career such as maybe theater/ acting, or singing/music and have no contacts or networks to start the first step towards our dreams. That’s when we need others’ help and guidance. We could reach out to people in our circles who are well established in the field of our dreams or make our own new circle and take their help in getting networks and recommendations to start our journey… Maybe we could do a course, get certifications, meet people in our own field and take their help to build future networks. The same way, we could be open to guiding others who are in need… this could be another way to expand our networks and learn through experience.
4. Stepping Out of “My World”: Most of us have our own comfort zones and are happy and contented in it! Sometimes we are so ‘adjusted’ to our own worlds that we tend to forget there are so many more ‘worlds’ outside. Stepping out of our own worlds and exploring outside could help us realize we have so many opportunities to spread our talents and knowledge. Sometimes stepping out could also help us make new dreams and give hope to achieve more than we thought we could. Stepping out could mean even personal vacation, we go see new places, learn about new cultures. We could also travel to different places for seminars and conferences to learn about global trends and opportunities in the areas of our interests.
5. Imagination is Powerful: As Azim Premji (Wipro), quoted, “Success is achieved twice. Once in the mind and the second time in the real world.“, the journey to reach our destination needs to start in our mind first… through imagination. Being open minded and imagining a dream state of life could help us achieve unique things. We need to be open minded to try out things. For instance, places such as UAE are known for many world records such as tallest building, fastest roller coaster, biggest frame shaped building and some unique architectures such as the coin building. They would not have been able to make all this happen without imagination and big vision. We need to learn from them that creativity and the drive to be unique and best is the key to achieving our dreams.
6. Being open to Failure: One thing that most of us have not learnt in schools is to be open to failure. We have mostly been drilled to avoid failure. More marks we score the more we are rewarded and if we fail to achieve a ‘good score’ we would be disregarded. This way we grow up with the mindset that failure is a shameful thing and we would if we failed, we would lose respect. This causes mental blocks and hinders us from trying new things because of the fear of failure. We need to realize failing is okay and is a stepping stone for success. Edison’s quote, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”, suggests that he couldn’t have invented bulb if not for trying several ways to get there despite of failing many times. We could also achieve something as great if we are open and learn from failure and try different other ways to achieve our dreams.

This way one will be able to make dream into reality and simultaneously attract opportunities to live one’s dreams.

To conclude, let’s be inspired by another quote by Dr. Abdul Kalam that summarizes this article… “If four things are followed – having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work, and perseverance – then anything can be achieved.”