Your Aspirations and Vision: Bringing Them Back to Life

Your aspirations and visions, it’s time to bring them back to life. Do you remember what inspired your dreams?

Was the desire to dance sparked while watching Misty Copeland’s performance in Swan Lake? Did you decide to write children’s books because you loved how words transported you to another place and time while listening to bedtime stories?  Or was it the swiftness of the emergency medical service (EMS) worker resuscitating your neighbor which motivated you to become a doctor?

Whatever the inspiration, it established a dream in your heart and when life was simple and innocent, you began taking steps to bring it into reality.

The first chapter of your book is in the back of the file cabinet. You researched dance companies and observed dancers during practice. You hired a tutor and purchased the materials needed to study for the MCAT exam.

Then things started happening. Your mother became sick. Your company downsized, and you were laid off.   You fell in love, got married and had children.  Whatever the cause, your dreams were placed on the back burner.

The problem with the back burner is it’s still in your face and close enough to hurt when you think about your forgotten dreams.

Moms Mabley, a famous female comedian, inspired my desire to travel.  She went on an extensive international journey and after returning home was reluctant to discuss her encounters.

Ms. Mabley stated she met some interesting people and visited amazing places, but there was another side of her travels which was unpleasant. To remain fair to the places that weren’t so enjoyable, she refused to discuss either the positive or negative aspects of her trip.

Although I was very young, her refusal to comment on her journey triggered a determination to see for myself what she refused to talk about. Thus began my aspirations to travel.

When I got my first decent paying job, I set a goal to travel every quarter. Have I achieved that goal? No.

It was years before I could go anywhere. When I finally started traveling, it was every other year, and it gradually transitioned into an annual vacation. However, after having children, my dream was placed on hold again.

Because sometimes I wanted to take my children with me, I sacrificed and traveled every other year so they could be exposed to life beyond their community.

To be honest, I still haven’t traveled every quarter.  2019 was the first time I could travel three times within a year. But even then, it didn’t happen quarterly.

What is my point? Although I set a vision several years ago. It didn’t play out the way I was hoping it would, but I never lost sight of it. I found other ways to make it happen.

And this is what I want for you, to find ways to make your dreams happen. Take the vision off the back burner and bring it to life.

Your Aspirations and Visions: How to Bring Them Back to Life

How can you birth your dream? The same way you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.

No goal is accomplished in one gigantic motion. It’s progressive and depending on your situation, you may have to make several adjustments and that’s okay.

Tips for Birthing Your Vision:

• Talk with your family and work out a plan which allows you to have time to work on your dreams. Maybe you can take half a day on Saturday or Sunday.
• Extend the time to make it happen. Instead of a 3-year deadline, make it 5 years.
• Think of one step you can take each quarter and begin working on it. Write it down and put it in plain sight so it can inspire you daily.
• Don’t compare yourself to anyone else’s progress. This is YOUR journey.
• Push through. With things such as going to that 9 to 5, taking care of loved ones, or driving our kids to all their events, if we are honest, we don’t always like doing it, but we push through anyway. We need to develop that mindset towards our goals…to push through when everything is screaming for us to drop it.

It’s a new year, a new decade. Your dreams and goals may not be new, but this can be a new time to refresh your vision. Hopefully, this will be the year I can take those four trips.

Let’s do this!!!

            If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan, but never the goal. Unknown.