Dream distractions…what’s holding you back?

fear failure








Moving from dream to reality.

How do I move from my current reality to my dream?

Last week we looked at how to do a dream board. That’s such a fun exercise. In case you missed the conversation please read the January 2019 blog on this page.  So, dreaming opens up your mind to possibilities, however all those beautiful ideas remain dreams if we don’t start building a plan of how we can achieve them.

I like to do what is known as a personal development strategy. Just like organizations build a vision, mission and workplan or 5-year strategy, we too must begin to value ourselves like that. Do you realize that you can work for a company and each month you diligently deliver the results or outputs your bosses give you? Yet in our own life many of us are living without a plan or any serious long-term vision and are not tracking our progress.

Okay I know the Melancholic and Choleric personality types who are diligent planners probably do have a plan but lets work with the majority. Firstly, before you draw the plan you need to state where you want to be in each sphere of your life and contrast that against where you are. It’s a reality check and it’s okay to do that and be real with yourself. I am at point A and I want to get to B. Once you do that for each key area of focus you will be able to develop strategies to move from point A to point B in your life. For example, if you want to build a family house (that’s my target and point B) but you don’t own land yet (my reality point A). It’s a simplistic example. So how do we move from no land to building a house? These are the strategies or steps you need to take; buy land, save for materials, start building, complete my house. Simple. But no in reality you need to plan for where you want to buy land, how much does it cost and when can you buy it, what resources do you have etc. So, building a house may not be a one-day venture but can run from 1 year to 10 years depending on how your critically plan the steps. Are you looking at upscale area like Kololo or  an out of town location like Matugga, how much do you earn, what are your income sources, and can you buy in a group to reduce costs? Those are some of the critical questions when developing a step by step plan for achieving your goals. I picked constructing a house because that the focus of many people today, but we could look at our various dreams which we have. Is it to lose weight, get married, pray more, start a business, go back to school?

Whatever the goal, the key questions as we said earlier are 1) where am I/what’s my reality now? 2) where do I want to be? 3) what do I need to do to get there with a given time frame? Breakdown what you need to do into a tiny step by step process. Most of your strategies will focus on being disciplined, save more, try and make more money, spend more time on it. Remember not all the dreams need financial resources some just need time, discipline, right networks and consistency.

So, go ahead try and strategize on how to you can move from your reality to your dream. The dream board you discussed in the previous blog will help you visualize your dreams. The key areas of my life that I like to plan for are family, faith, finance and investments, school, health etc. So on one side write your dream/goal (right side) and on the left write your reality. For monitoring and evaluation professionals you will see later the dream becomes your goal or target and your reality is the baseline but in between you need to plan how you get to the dream.  

Let me know how your brainstorming goes and if the three critical questions I asked earlier are useful. If you have any questions or need some guidance please do contact me. I will be happy to talk through your journey planner.

I know some people think what’s the fuss and why all the brainstorming and planning…how come you haven’t questioned your organisation’s business plan but wonder why you need a personal plan. Do you think your organization would survive without a marketing plan, annual targets or a strategy? So if its good enough for an organization to have a plan then surely so must you..but then I ask, can you go for a journey without a map? How do you reach your destination especially if you have one chance to get there? The strategic planning is just a map to guide us on how to navigate through the waters of life as they say ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’.

Next week we will look at the resources we need, yes including money, to achieve our dreams. Have a great week and please do some strategic thinking by answering the three questions I paused earlier…what is your reality, what is your goal and how do we move from point A to point B you can chose your duration either 1-10 years or even longer?