3 Practical Steps to Turn Your Dreams Into Reality
By: Silas Mahner
Tags: Productivity, Accountability, Entrepreneurship, Goals, Dreams

Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash

If you are like most people, you have dreams of things you want to do someday. The harsh reality for most of us is that work/life gets in the way of us turning those dreams into reality. Or perhaps it’s the slick Apple Remote design that pulls you into Netflix more often than you’d like. Either way, these are real issues that we all struggle with. Here are some tips on how to create a roadmap to make your dreams a reality.

1. Formalize what your dream looks like.

One of the most obvious but insightful things I ever read was, “If you wish to build a chair, you first must know what a chair is.” I know it’s so obvious, but for most of us we just think, I want to run my own business. Or, I want to be in better shape. Or, I want to travel. The issue is that we are not formalizing what those things mean. Here are two examples of transforming these generalist statements into formalized goals.

I want to run my own business. To make this happen you first need to identify what type of business you want to run. This will likely be related to your passions; to the things, you return to over and over again. Identify those passions and identify what you don’t like about your current work. Use those guiding factors to help you solidify what the business you want to start is.

If you are like me and don’t know the exact details of it, at least find the sector or type of business that you want to start. By narrowing things down you will slowly approach the target.

I want to be in better shape. This is one I think we have all told ourselves and frankly it can seem daunting. The first step is again to define what “better shape” means. What would the result look like? Is it a six-pack, do you want to run a marathon? Figure out what your main motivator is and settle on a reality that can be achieved. Use specifics such as a number of pull-ups, or mile time.

Once you have identified and defined your dream in tangible, measurable terms you are ready to move onto the next step.

2. Identify milestones.

Most of our dreams are things that can’t just be accomplished in a weekend. For many their dream will only come to fruition through months or years of work. It is because of this truth that we must break the dream into digestible portions. For me, I have created an outline with target dates in the future that I will meet those milestones. Once the milestones along the way are defined, ie: secured investors in the business, or purchased high-quality running shoes, we break it down further.

Depending on the complexity of your dream you will need to continually compartmentalize and further narrow the goal. Once your milestone is broken down into something that can be accomplished in under a week's time (ideally into a day) then you have hit the money. For me, I have daily tasks I do to advance me towards my dream, and I have weekly tasks that I perform on the weekends.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. ~ Lao Tzu

This is the fundamental idea of advancing towards anything. If the goal is daunting how will you start? But if the goal requires constant effort in tiny spurts, you will eventually reach the destination.

In the example of reaching a certain number of pull-ups, you simply need to start doing pull-ups every day. If you need to lose weight, slowly cut down on your eating. Start to flex your will by daily eating half as much as you would normally do. As you gain control over your will power you will be able to cut an entire meal, etc.

3. Find someone to hold you accountable.

This is the secret sauce to the successful achievement of your goals in my humble opinion. Many people will set out on the tasks mentioned above, but few will follow through. The reasons for not following through are vast but ultimately they stem from a lack of accountability.

What I’ve done to be held accountable is to join a group of people who attended the same boot camp as me (Praxis) who meet weekly. They discuss their goals and define them. Then they publicly put them in our Slack Channel and everyday people check-in regarding their daily progress. Then at the end of the week, we need to publicly affirm or deny our successful completion of those goals.

This isn’t simply social pressure to complete those goals — while there is definitely some pressure — it’s a group of people who actively recognize that they want to advance in many areas of their life and take action to do so. Now that I’m checking in with them every day I’m able to advance closer to my dreams every day with sustained effort.

A group of people to keep you accountable doesn’t work for everyone, but you can certainly find a mentor or good friend who will hold you to the goals you accomplish.

That’s it.

I know it seems oversimplified but that’s because it is. Accomplishing your goals is simple. It just requires actively thinking about and defining what you want to accomplish, breaking it down into sustainable weekly or daily goals, and proactively choosing to be held accountable. The rest falls into place as you go.