Let me start this episode with
2 quotes from David Oyedepo I heard when I was a teenager that confounded me,
he said “If you can imagine it, then you can do it” he also said “If you can
see it with your inner mind, your destiny will attract it for you” – I didn’t understand
this until later years when I understood he meant dreaming.
And today, I am a dreamer, haaaaaaa! if you know me you would know.
Before I continue, are you one
of those people that confuse goals and dreams, think they are the same or think
they lead to each other? You are not wrong however it depends on the context. So,
lets quickly talk about this two before we continue…
Goals
Dreams
Goals are something you are acting on
Dreams are something you are just thinking about
(Imagination)
They
are our plans or intentions for the future
They are our wishes, hopes,
and desires for the future
They
represent what we are trying to achieve and are conscious decisions we make
Unlike
goals that are plans which include the dates they are to be completed, dreams
are what we claim we want to do, be, or have ‘someday
Do you dream about your life and how do you dream? You will agree with me that many of us don’t dream. Or let’s agree that we dream then we are like the people Erma Bombeck describes as “people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.’ Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look in it, and yep, they’re still there.”
If your dream is about your becoming, then you need have things set in motion when you have a dream. That is why you can’t do light dreams, they have to be crazy, big, sorry “biggest” – they have to scare you because the person in your dreams should be very far from the person you are today. And when you wake up from such dreams, your task is to find ways to work out that dream.
Do you want to know if your
dreams are too small? I heard once that
If
your dream doesn’t scare you, your dream is too small.
If
your dream doesn’t wake you up before other people or make you work late into
the night, It’s too small.
If
your dream follows the normal circle of the life you know – It’s too small
I believe that our destiny/talents/gifts
are there for us to affect lives around us, that makes me believe that our life
is more than just a comfortable salary, a big house and a fancy car.
For those of you over 30, Can you comfortable say that the boy (the you) that dreamt of you when you were little isn’t disappointed about you now. If you are young, can you pat yourself on the back that the boy in you today is working to become the man you see in your dreams?
Allow me to share a personal story with you, I remember when I got to the University, one night I was at a passing out ceremony of the then graduates who were sharing their testimonies, over 7 people gave testimonies of how they had complete 5.0 in over 6 semesters out of 10. And that was when it hit me that I had just come to the University, I had no plan nor dream in my mind of the end. That night, I decided to start dreaming of myself in front of my classmates getting an award and being able to tell such stories and for the next 8 semesters I kept dreaming and working and lo and behold, in the end, I did finish with First Class, stood on the podium to receive my scroll, and I can still remember the cheers when my name was called.
Today, I credit that feat to my dream that night and I knew at some point my destiny just absorbed it. You know why I was sure the dream worked, That faithful night after the gathering, I heard my classmates who literally said those guys are genius, I can’t reach that level, I’m not cut out for it and I was shocked that they didn’t even give themselves a chance with over 8 semester left for us. They didn’t give themselves a chance but I went and I dared to dream and for me it became a reality.
You are where you are in your
life today based on a lot of things but let’s not dwell on the past because It’s
never too late to start dreaming. If we don’t dream about the future, how will we
know where we are going? When we build our dreams, our dreams build us
and I’ve come to know that the more we can dream, the more we can do.
Look
at the inventions that surround you, mobile phones, iPhones, iPads, planes, cars;
they all started as dreams! Our dreams are beacons that reveal possibilities
and allow us to transform life.
The great men of today that you know had dreams bigger than their mind but they
captured, chased it and whatever they made out of their dream became the legacy
we know of them today.
What am I saying – Chase a
dream bigger than you. Let it wake you up, let it pinch you, let it make you
run towards your legacy. We all need a dream bigger than our sub-conscious and
when we can capture it, That’s the beginning of our being great.
Say it to yourself and believe it
– Dream it so big that the world would only believe it when they see it.
There is so much to talk about
dreams, maybe next week we will talk about the act of dreaming but today I’ll
leave you with the words of T.E Lawrence, he said “All men dream, but not
equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty of their minds, wake in the day
to find it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they
may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible”
So, to all great men and women
listening to me, Start dreaming and act on your dreams.
