Forget Making New Year’s Resolutions, Follow Your Own North Star
Forget making New Year’s resolutions that you will surely break before all of the holiday bills arrive. Or, choosing the one-word or three-words for the year that will slip your mind when life gets busy or knocks you flat on your butt.
Rather, embrace your audacious, true dream that will guide your journey of Life for the next five years, the next decade or the next quarter century.
Why a Dream?
For thousands of years, humans have relied on the North Star to guide their journeys. Travelers may take side trips or detours, often experiencing unplanned adventures along the way, but that bright light shining from the heavens above always brings them back on course.
Our aspirations, our dreams, are our North Star, guiding us through our lives. Although we may waver or stray, achieve other exciting goals, trek on an adventure or two — or even a misadventure — our dream is always present and guides our life’s course, if we are willing to listen, pay attention and follow.
Without a dream, we meander and drift through life without a direction. Our dream — like the North Star to the travelers of yesteryear — is not a luxury, but rather a necessity.
What, Actually, is a Dream?
With so many aspirations, goals and even fantasies swirling around in our heads, how do we know which dream is our true North Star?
In my signature talk “Finding Your True Dream, The North Star for Your Life,” I explain in great detail the five elements that make up a dream.
Briefly, a dream:
- must be enormous, bold, audacious — keeping in mind that size is relative, what might be audacious for someone might not be so for someone else;
- contains a minuscule dose of reality — which differentiates a dream from a fantasy, however, on occasion, what is not reality or not possible today might become reality tomorrow thanks to a new technology, discovery, skill or opportunity — making a dream now possible to achieve;
- presses us to grow and expand way beyond our comfort zones;
- demands other individuals be involved — if one person can accomplish a dream alone, then it is not bold and audacious enough;
- ignites a spark, a passion within us — like a shining star. We smile and our eyes twinkle when we talk about our dreams.
My dream is to become a well-paid, internationally-known, motivational speaker. Although this journey has only just begun, it has already taken me to amazing places and I am looking forward to experiencing where all my North Star guides me.
What is your true dream, your North Star?
I’d love to hear all about it!
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Originally published at Do It Myself Blog.