How do you do your dreaming? Do you Dream about your future? Spending time considering what the world might be like and how we would like to experience it, this is a past time that so many people engage in. Wondering what the world might be like as a lottery winner. Do you have a preferred method of doing this and does it work for you? If you could take a moment right now and simply close your eyes and just imagine; what would your future look like? So many of us engage in a vision of the future that is based on our now and don’t really dare to dream big. Just how big can you dream? If someone was to dare you to dream as big as you could, just how big would your Big Hairy Audacious Dreams (BHAD’s) be? Just how big can you dream? What would be your Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG’s) to support the achievement of your dreams. Sometimes some people need a little prod to consider these things so it is easier to imagine this and think big, if you imagine what they might be if you were to win the lottery? Now you have them, your BHAD’s. How do you do your dream? How do you do them. Everybody seems to do it in a different way. Are you one of those people who dream in your head, getting locked into the ideas of what the world could be like for you. Or do you do your dreaming around a friend’s kitchen table, do they exist as a conversation about what might be. Or do you do your dream and live your dreams in the world around you?
I am sure that many of you will have explored many different methods and ways of being able to motivate and excite yourself about trying to live the life that you like to live. Our personal motivating force is a strong primeval one and perhaps simply falls into one of two categories for most people. Why not ask yourself right now, is your motivation to achieve the things you want in life driven because you want to move away from a place of pain and discomfort sometimes driven by necessity or is it driven by a sense of choice to want to move toward a sense of excitement sense of achievement to something really powerful and a fantastically pleasurable place. In the world of performance coaching we always explore whether your motivation is towards or away from, driven by pleasure or pain. We can always set out to achieve the same BHAD’s, but what’s the flavour of the energy that drives this.
The sense of the energy that drives our goals has really powerful implications for how we achieve our goals and the speed at which we can achieve them. Often when our goals are driven by an away from motivation we make really really quick gains early on, moving at pace toward the thing we desire. But as we move away from the source of our motivation, our sense of pain, the impact of the emotive force that drives starts to diminish. Our goals now are not achieved and we end up in a place of stasis and frustration. When our goals are driven by the towards we see the opposite, we see initially it is harder to get going as the source of our motivation is further away. But as we get going and we start to move closer and closer to our goals then the achievement of our BHAD’s become a very realistic thing. Just imagine for a moment how excited you get before you go on holiday or you do something your really looking forward to. This is a place that we like and are typically at ease. We love toward motivation.
So how do we do this? It is always really important to focus on what you want. When you find yourself wanting something that is a not to have something (like cake) or a stop something (like procrastinating), It’s really important that we ask ourselves what is it we actually want instead? This now gives us something to focus on, a target and a toward frame of reference. The additional beautiful component that we receive when we focus on toward motivation is absence of peace and control that comes from making positive changes in our lives.
Traditionally in western society focus on a very straight forward way of thinking about the world we set ourselves up with a very simple cognitive equation. Doing, Having, Being what does this look like, work hard achieve the results and be happy with what we achieve. For so so many people this works well and people would see no reason to change it, but does it work as well as it could. So, what might the alternative look like? Well the alternative is more of an Eastern base philosophy which is focused around Being, Doing, Having. So why might this work differently? Often people are left in a sense of frustration or disappointment at the non-achievement of their goals and this is often due to not achieving yet, which then means that the sense of disappointment or frustration that they carry, is carried with them while they are now trying to achieve what it is they want to achieve. How often do you achieve success from a sense of frustration or disappointment? Probably never. Whereas Being really cool and comfortable or excited about what it is you are working to achieve, will then allow you to Do your Doing from a positive place, which will typically allow to achieve your goals so much quicker.
So what can we do to achieve what it is you desire in your future?
Step 1. Dream big and create your BHAD’s. Draw them, write them down, embrace them.
Step 2. Imagine what it would be like to achieved them already and know deeply in every fibre of your body how that feels. Be your own human emotion tape recorder and choose to remember how it feels. Use a colour, a symbol or a key word or phrase as a way of reminding yourself how to feel these feelings whenever you want to.
Step 3. Fire your trigger and press play on these emotions and use this powerful emotional state to take action to achieve your BHAD’s.
Live the life you dream of.
