How to Turn Dreams and Goals Into Reality

Don’t you have dreams, visions or plans and goals for the things you’d love to accomplish (or change)? Having the dream is the easy part. Making it a reality can be more challenging. However, the good news is that there are proven techniques that can get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Follow this process to bring your dreams to fruition:

Turn Your Dream into a Goal

When you have a goal, you have a true target. For a greater chance of success, your plan should have a deadline and it must be measurable.

It has been said that dreams are goals without a deadline. Give yourself the gift of setting a deadline and things will start to happen. You want your goal to be measurable because, if you can’t measure it, how will you know when you’ve succeeded?

For example, this goal is measurable and has a deadline: “On or before June 1, I will weigh 150 lbs. or less.” Make your goal as desirable as possible without being unrealistic. If you feel that your goal is unreasonable, it’s much more difficult to encourage yourself to actually pursue it.

Prioritize Your Goal Daily

Read and write your goal each day. You give instructions to your brain thousands of times a day. Let your mind know that your goal is something more important than, “I feel like eating a ham sandwich,” or “I need to stop at the grocery store on the way home.”

Make a list of negative associations. You probably have negative associations with achieving your goal; otherwise you’d already have it. So make a list of all the negative stuff that pops into your mind when you think about achieving your goal.

Examine that list and think of ways to work around those challenges. Each time you notice a new negative association with your goal, add it to your list. Things will tend to change over time, and new challenges will reveal themselves.

Make a List of All the Positives About Reaching Your Goal.

How would it make you feel, change your life, or change your perspective of the world and yourself? What would your next goal be? Journaling is a fantastic way to get clear and discover new things about yourself. Check out my post on the many benefits of journaling.

Make your goal as attractive as possible. Envision your life after achieving the goal. This will help to keep your motivation levels high.

What Do You Need to Make Your Goal a Reality?

Do you need to special license, or maybe a laptop? Is there some knowledge you must acquire? Make a list of what you need and figure out how you’re going to get it.

Gather and Record Your Available Resources

Who do you know that could be helpful? What expertise or items do you need that someone else might have?

Achieving difficult goals can rarely be accomplished alone; you’re likely to need some help and guidance. Look at the list you made in step 5 and see what you already have in your life that could help you on your path.

Track Your Progress

Measure your progress each day. Tracking is critical to making continued progress. You can only adjust your approach if you know how you’re doing. Consider making a chart if that’s applicable to your goal.

In many ways, working toward a goal is like baking a cake: if you follow the recipe, you’ll always pull a perfect cake out of the oven. Likewise, if you follow the above steps, you’ll find it much easier to achieve your dreams.

Using Visuals to Achieve Your Goals and Dreams

Now that we’ve covered the practical, tangible steps, let’s talk about the power of visualization. Having visual reminders of your goals, dreams, and aspirations helps keep you focused on what’s important to you.

Throughout life’s daily crises, stresses, and distractions, visual reminders can help you remember the big picture. They can help you overcome challenges and move forward each day toward achieving the life you truly desire.

Knowing that you’re always moving forward brings a confident, peaceful feeling. You’re sure that, no matter what life brings your way, you will achieve the success you crave. This feeling is an awesome motivator to keep you going even when the chips are down, and visuals can help you get it.

Try these ways to use visuals as a means of achieving the goals in your life:

Use Post-it Note Reminders

This simple method puts your goals and motivators at the forefront. Buy colorful sticky notes and fun colored pens and commit your goals to paper. Stick these notes in the places where they matter most so you can see them and think about them often.

Place notes on your bathroom mirror, your headboard, the refrigerator door, on your favorite coffee mug or right on the bottom of your computer monitor. Any place that you’re likely to glance throughout the day is a good destination for a motivating, goal-setting note.

Make your notes specific, “I want to eat right this week to lose 2 lbs by the 1st,” or broad but motivating, “Today will be a productive and motivating day. You can do it!” These sticky notes will encourage productivity throughout the day with simple, basic visuals. And if you are a mom seeking to lose weight, the MUTU System is a proven, effective and popular program to help you lose weight and strengthen your core and pelvis. They even have a taster system for you to try before you buy.

Stock Up On Note Cards

Buy a stack of white note cards and commit a goal or aspiration to each one. Decorate them, write notes on them, and otherwise customize them to suit your needs. Keep them in your pocket, purse or brief case and refer to them daily as a means of motivating yourself to achieve your goals and dreams.

When you refer to the same note cards on a daily basis, a habit forms. It is said that 21 days of repeating a task will ingrain it in you. Check your note cards daily until it becomes a habit, and it will become a vital tool in helping you achieve your goals.

Work With Visual Mind Maps

This tool will help you organize your goals in a highly visual way. Create a mind map on a large sheet of poster board. Designate an area for each long-term goal, and add an image and a small amount of text. Create a cloud of medium and long-term goals around each long-term goal, with lines connecting them to the long-term focus.

Use images, colors, words, and other meaningful visuals to decorate your poster. Draw your own graphics, clip pictures from magazines, or download images from the internet to create a colorful — and visually appealing — goal-oriented mind map. Please see my post on mind mapping for more ideas.

Put time and effort into the creation of your visual mind map, and then put it in a place where you’ll see it daily. This visual will help you keep your short, medium, and long term goals in mind and will consistently remind you of what you want to be focusing on.

Move Into a Visioning State

If you are already a practitioner of visioning and vision boarding, you may be feeling the need to try something new. Rather than outwardly projecting or picturing your vision, you can begin to radiate your vision.

There is a course offered by Michael Beckwith called Living a Visioning State in your 40’s, 50’s and Beyond in which you can learn to move from the limitations of visualization and the Law of Attraction to live in a visioning state. This is a powerful practice in which Michael will guide you to begin connecting with the visioning state and the gifts that are ready to emerge through you.

Visual reminders of your goals are extremely beneficial in helping you achieve your dreams and aspirations. These reminders are easy to see on a daily basis, helping you recall your most important goals early on and throughout the day. If there are specific goals you want to focus on, visual reminders are a great way to help you achieve them.

Originally published at https://mindfulmysticmama.com on December 25, 2020.