This is How You Pursue Your Dreams & Kill It at Life
I spend a good amount of my time with single guys. We’ve spent some evenings talking about pursuing our dreams and talking about how we want to kill it at life…all while sitting on the couch. It sounds a lot like this:
“It’d be really cool if I could do ______ one day. Man, it would just be a blast.”
Looks and smells like a dream, doesn’t it? Ah yes — dreams. Dreams were what we had when we were kids. We spent our childhood drenched in dreaming of we were going to become.
But we’re men now. So, we should just let them go, right? We don’t have time for dreams. We can shoot for the stars, but we don’t have time to get off the grind of life. We’ve got bills to pay and life to be lived. Forget dreams — they’re for the impractical, right?
Wrong.
Dreams are worth pursuing. Every time I hear young men talk about who and what they want to become they have my full attention. Why? Because they are telling me how they want to make a dent in this world. They are all in with their heart. They only lack the traction with their hands, heading in the right direction. It begins with them learning to get off the couch.
This is a problem. A dream with no action plan is no dream at all. It’s a fantasy land. Too many young men spend their twenties living in fantasy lands.
What is the catalyst you need to get you from your fantasy land to working towards and pursuing your dreams now? Relationships. People.
Your dream will not be fulfilled until your relationships are in order. If your people are off, you will be off. And if you are off, your dream cannot happen. It will go nowhere. No one has ever done anything of great impact in this world by themselves. You need people and relationships to go the furthest in this life.
Relationships sharpen your dream
When you choose to lay your dreams on the line in front of the people you do life with, your dream will become sharper than ever.
When you choose to lay your dreams on the line in front of the people you do life with, your dream will become sharper than ever.
We have these little annoyances called blind spots. Because of our age and lack of experience, our blind spots tend to be a bit larger than others. Because of our blind spots, we can see the dull spots in our dreams and what needs to be adjusted. Inviting others in, stepping into healthy relationships will sharpen every part of your dream.
Relationships will challenge your dream
I remember what it was like the first time I began laying out some of my deepest desires and dreams in front of some of my closest friends. I felt like I was going to get sick. My only hope was that they wouldn’t destroy every dream I had.
Surprise! They didn’t. My dreams are still alive and breathing. They didn’t kill my dreams, but they did challenge me on them. It wasn’t so they could see me fail. It was the opposite. They wanted to see me achieve my dreams. They knew success was inevitable once I overcame the challenges I presented.
Relationships will fulfill your dream
This may take years to develop but the fruit on the back end is worth it. Your investment in people and relationships now will help you to fulfill your dream later. Get the people to get you where you need to go and you will achieve results you never thought possible.
Where do you begin? How do you pursue your dreams as a young single man?
1. Get your dream out in front of people.
It’s time to start talking about your dreams. Stating you’d like to do it one day is a great start. But that’s all it is — a start. So get your dreams out in front of people and see how it resonates.
Don’t forget about timing. It’s important, and you should avoid foolish mistakes at all costs. Getting your dream out in front of others will help you to build a bridge to your dream so you don’t have to leap.
“Isolation is the enemy of excellence.” — Aaron Walker (@VFTCoach)
Bounce it around with others. Start talking about it in conversation. Be prepared to answer questions and take some next steps. Invite others in to make you accountable and watch the bridge to your dreams build before your eyes.
2. Heed the wisdom and steal from those who have gone before you.
Everything I have learned about pursuing my dreams I have stolen from others. And they stole it from someone else. Every process, every step I took notice of what other successful people were doing and emulated it. It works! You don’t have to be bashful about it. You’re not stealing their dream — you’re stealing the process of how they got there.
This is called heeding the wisdom of those who have gone before you. It’s not stealing when they give it to you. These are the people you want around you. They offer up and give wisdom freely. Go to where they are and learn everything you can from them.
3. Reverse engineer the entire process with people all around you.
I never went to business school because I didn’t have to. I am learning the complete process of reverse engineering just about everything in life to get it done.
Several years ago I completed an Ironman. How did I do it? Set a date and reversed engineered the entire training process from race date and executed every day. A couple of summers ago, I wrote 100,000 words. How did I do it? I reversed engineered from 100,000 words down to 0, with a goal every single day.
In each of those successful attempts, you know what made it work? I did it with people around me. They cheered me, challenged me and pushed me forward. I have failed many other times before, each of them with one theme in common: I tried to do it all by myself. I did it all in isolation.
Don’t go the direction I did.
Reverse engineer your dream with people around you. You are guaranteed success on some level.
Reverse engineer your dream with people around you. You are guaranteed success on some level.
At the end of the day…
Your greatest legacy, the biggest dent you will make in this world and the most amazing dreams you will pursue will have nothing to do with stuff. It’s about people. It’s about relationships.
So, do you have a dream? Bring it out into the open, talk about it with others and execute it in the context of community.
Your Call to action…
- Relationships are hard and you don’t have to suck to get better at them. Download my guide on how to not suck at relationships and kickstart your dream today. Click HERE to download now!
- Which of these three steps do you struggle with the most and why? Engage in the conversation below.
