By: Anja Uitdehaag

“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

All kids dream big. They want to be super famous, super meaningful, super powerful superheroes. (I used to spend quite a bit of time dreaming about doing something special and be famous for making a positive difference to the whole world in my own way.)

As we mature, these dreams are typically educated out of us. With age comes “wisdom” and a more “practical” perspective. We lower our expectations and often fear failure and risk taking.

Such a shame!

Even if not every aspect of our dreams is realized, our dreams herald big results.

What most successful people have in common is that they had dreams and consistently maintained a “think big” attitude.

The beauty of dreaming big is that it means that the best still lies ahead of you. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how stuck you feel in your life, or where you are right now: with big dreams come big possibilities!

And isn’t that what makes life fun and worth living?

A few tips to get you started realizing your dream:

• Face your fears and acknowledge them. Confronting your fears doesn’t make them go away, but it will build courage. And that’s what courage is: confronting your fears. If you continuously confront your fears, theywill diminish;
• Realize that anything worthwhile takes focus, dedication, and follow-through;
• Think big, execute small. Eat the Elephant One Bite at a Time. Starting small helps you break down that big dream into small, manageable action steps. A small step towards a big dream is often the only motivation you need to take the next step, and the next;
• When practicing big thinking, seek like-minded people who energize you. Surround yourself with people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas and support your ambitions;
• Cultivate a “can do” attitude. Focus on the positives, the potential, and the possibilities. Crush negativity (“No, I cannot do that”-thinking)
• Invest in yourself. This could be something as small as buying a self-help book or enrolling in a business class or as big as traveling across the world;
• Celebrate Your Failures: Each time you fail consider it a lesson learned. Learn from it and move on because with every baby step you take you’re one step closer to realizing your dream;
• Above all: Believe in Yourself. Belief is the most important part of realizing your dreams. If you believe it can happen, it can happen. To quote Steve Jobs:
  

  “Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” 

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