Dreams Are Nice, But Without Work They’re Just Dreams

I’m looking at another personal development point from one of my quote images, and I’m not sorry if it shatters a few dreams…

I took that photo at a place called Halnaker in West Sussex. I had seen photos of a tree tunnel online, did some research to find where it was, and made a trip down to take some photos, making a return trip to catch the view in autumn, which is when I took this photo.

Photos of tree tunnels can trigger the imagination, can fire up thoughts of walking through it, what might be around the corner and so on, which is why I thought it worked well with the words I put over the top…

Dreams are nice, but without work they’re just dreams.

We all have dreams. I’m not simply talking about the dreams we have at night. Those are a fact, even though some people say they don’t have dreams, it’s a scientific fact that it’s a function of the brain. We all have those.

No, I’m talking about ‘dreams’ dreams! The dreams of ‘I wish’, the dreams of ‘wouldn’t it be nice if’ dreams! The dreams that we tell ourselves are ‘only dreams’.

That’s the problem right there.

Whether it’s small dreams like going to see a show for example, or big dreams about career or massive lifestyle changes, it’s such a common malaise to simply leave them as dreams, to hope that they’ll happen by magic, that the fairies will come and make them come true.

Hmm.

People accept this situation, usually with a wry smile, because that turns them into a comfort blanket, a blanket we can turn to when we need a moan about out *actual* lives, the non dream one that we live every day.

It’s not very comfortable really though, is it! That comfort blanket can feel mighty thin when it’s needed the most. In fact, when the difference between our real life and the one of our dreams, the one we thought it would be, leads to a stress build up that pushes us to our limits, the comfort blanket fades away to nothingness.

So, why do we do it, and what can we do to change it..?

The main reason we do it, is because we know, and we know it full well, that to do something about the dream will involve work. Ah, the dreaded ‘W’ word!

Not only will it involve work, the work will in all likelihood be hard work, challenging, and lasting for a long time!

Not only *that*, we also know that putting in the work won’t even be any guarantee of success at all – we might fail!

Oh blimey, so if we take the thought of lots of ongoing hard work with no guarantee of success, versus a perceived comfort blanket of ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ dreams, it’s not hard to see why so many people go for the dreams option is it!

There are two problems with this…

Firstly, I’ve already mentioned that the comfort blanket can feel awfully thin when we rely on it the most. Our dreams don’t go away if we ignore them. Ok, some of them might, the smaller ones, but the significant ones, the big ones, the ones that have real meaning for the authentic genuine us? No they don’t go away if we ignore them.

No, they lurk. They lurk in the background, building up a drip drip nagging that we should be doing something about them. A drip drip nagging that time is not waiting for anyone, and that another day without doing something about it, is another day *without*

This means a huge amount of discontentment for so many people, and it just doesn’t have to be like that.

The second problem with avoiding the hard work connected with doing something about our dreams, is that we will *still* have lots of hard, ongoing work in our lives!

Our job, our family life, our health – all of these things demand our attention, demand our effort, our work, and yes, they naturally have failures along the way!

So this makes it a nonsense to think that leaving our dreams as just dreams gives us an easier life! All it does it mean we are working and facing challenges connected to a life that has less meaning for us than it could, than it should!

So, if it doesn’t have to be like that, and it doesn’t, what can we do about it..?

Well, instead of viewing ‘work’ as some sort of dreaded ‘W’ word, why don’t we look at ‘action’ as one of the magic ‘A’ words? I call it one of the 4 magic words beginning with ‘A’, and with good reason.

If you take action, things will happen. That might sound like a glib truism, but don’t let that diminish the power of action.

It’s everything.

We take action all day long, we achieve things all day long, it’s just that because most of this action is directed at things we already know, we take the power for granted. What if we step back, and appreciate that power though?

What if we directed that power with intention, towards those dreams? It could be smaller dreams maybe – me going to take photos of a tree tunnel perhaps. I had to take action to find out where it was and how to get there, and then I had to get in the car and drive.

I could have sat at home and hoped or wished it would happen, or thought it might be nice. Instead I used the power of action.

How about me writing this article? I write to put my message across to others, to get the message out there, my message of transforming lives through expectation combined with implementation. I could just think about doing it, or think it ‘would be nice if it happened’, but instead I sat down in front of my screen and got writing. I took the action to set up a blog, a facebook page, videos for youtube and so on. As the action builds up over time, so do the results.

Look to your dreams? Are you telling yourself that they’re just dreams? Are you using that as a comfort blanket to avoid work, because you don’t want to face the challenges of that work?

Could it be that in avoiding those challenges, you are leaving yourself challenges that you don’t want anyway but still have to deal with?

Why not take control? Why not set intention? Why not decide that you’re going to do something about your dreams, because let’s be honest, it’s worth it in the long run. Whatever the outcome, you’ll look back in the long term and be glad you decided to take action, to put in the work, because as the image says, dreams are nice, but without work, they’re just dreams.

Ok, I’d love to hear what you think – do leave a comment!

‘Til Next Time,
Health & happiness,
Gordon
P.S. If you’d like to do something about your dreams, do watch my free video series covering my 8 step goal achievement formula – it’s powerful stuff!