How may we achieve our dreams? It is not enough just to have a beautiful idea. There has to be in place a potent mixture of elements to drive us forward. Life itself and our experience of it can hand us those ingredients; and it all depends how they are combined, and in what quantities, and whether you have got a strong enough mixture. In this article, I will give you five powerful reasons why dreams require motivation.
There is a pragmatic school of thought which maintains that "dreams don't exist; life isn't black and white, it comes in shades of grey. Life is all compromise." But this, of course, depends upon how you choose to define the word "dream". Sadly, Roget's famous and much-beloved Thesaurus has a huge number of negative words under the heading "dreamer". But in this article I do not propose to write about "insubstantial things", or "visual fallacies"; but about how hopes and visions come to worldly success.
"Dreams Die First" is the title of a novel. And when I saw that title it had high emotional charge for me. Why? I suggest this is because those three words encapsulate what for many of us must be the very worst thing to happen: to see our dreams disappear into nothingness, unfulfilled. That prospect carries within it the implication of so many other things failing too - in body, mind and spirit. Where are we, as humans, without our dreams? The answer is, at the bottom of the pit.
I have always been a dreamer. Dreaming of course can cover a range of activities, varying from sitting gazing out of the window with your mind turned off, to having fully-formed visions, the visions which must precede any great achievement in this world - consider how Sydney Opera House came about, or look at the story behind the creation of The Eden Project in Cornwall... many of these and other major expressions of human creativity and ingenuity evolved from someone scribbling a rough sketch on a paper napkin in a pub.
Sometimes, we may hear someone described as "a dreamer", and the speaker intends this to be a pejorative term, as in a self-delusion or hallucination. And it may be the case that during the early parts of our lives it's difficult for others, especially adults and authority figures, to see our "dreaming habit" as anything else. Nothing could be further than the truth when we come to consider the case of a mature "visionary".
Many of those who achieve worldly success, first had dreams. Considering the example of show business, look, for example, at the young musical talents who competed in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber for the prize of playing Maria in "The Sound of Music" or Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" or Nancy in "Oliver!" Going a few decades back, look at the four Liverpool teenagers who rose from working class and lower middle class obscurity to eventually became The Beatles. "Where are we going?" John Lennon would ask. "To the top!" the others would cry. Paul McCartney himself is a perfect example of one who had dreams and then went on to fulfill them - especially as he attributes some of his most iconic songs (e.g. "Yesterday") to direct inspiration, literally, from dreams.
The difference between how I felt about dreams when I was a child, and the way I view it now, is simply that I believe you have to be driven and active and shrewd in order to make your dreams come true... or, significantly, you have to be able to marshal the support of people who have all those characteristics. Having dreams, by itself, is not enough. Just being a dreamer is not enough. What does it take to make dreams come true?
1) Dreams require money. At The Eden Project in Cornwall you will find these words in the exhibition in "The Core": "Dreams cost money." All dreams involve, somewhere along the line, someone who can build a solid base for the dream to stand upon and be rooted in, composed of money. Be prepared to invest money, wisely, in your dream.
2) Dreams require communication. You have to marshal resources to make dreams come true. And often, "resources" means "the support and loyalty of other people". And so you have to communicate your dreams to the people who care, the people who have power and significance within your milieu. And they also need to be highly functional and organized and socially competent, to make your dream come true.
3) Dreams require you to have a steely sense of purpose. How can we tell the difference between the fantasies of a Don Quixote, and the very highest of which we are capable - eager hope and high aspirations? I would say the difference lies in a steely sense of purpose -summed up in the word "motivation".
4) Dreams require a strong mix of different life experiences. What does it take to become one of those who go on to bring their dreams to reality? It's not enough just to have a beautiful idea. We need to have in place a potent combination of elements that propel us forward. Experience of life hands us those ingredients, a wide variety of them: it might be desperation, or insecurity, fear or anger, a search for love, a pursuit of spiritual truth, a thirst for knowledge, or a sense of despair or loss or injustice. It all depends how those ingredients are combined, and in what quantities, and what we then choose to do with them, with how much stubbornness, flexibility, determination, serendipity or persistence, together with animal instinct and acquired skill at navigating the world, in the same way as Christian did in "Pilgrim's Progress".
5) Dreams require a positive, dynamic relationship with time. Is it all just a matter of the will? One of the keys to this mystery of motivation does seem to be our relationship with time. I have heard it put this way: whatever life brings to us, instead of asking "Why?" we should ask: "What now?"
SC Skillman is the author of mystery romance novel "Mystical Circles", in which Juliet, concerned that her younger sister has fallen for the charismatic Craig, leader of a dubious New Age spiritual group, sets off for the Cotswolds to see the situation for herself. She arrives at Craig's community hoping to rescue Zoe. But intrigues, liaisons and relationships flare and flourish or fizzle out quickly within this close circle and, despite her reservations, Juliet is drawn into the Wheel of Love... with completely unforeseen consequences.
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