Most of us have heard the phrase throughout our lives, “What we behold, we become.” This is true to a certain extent, but we still hold the power of choice in what we become. It is really more like: “What we choose to become based on what we behold will set the course for our lives.” As a child, I grew up the son of a high school football coach. From the time that I can remember, I spent most of my waking hours with my dad at the field house and on the football field or track. Sports became a part of who I was from the core of my being.
However, I did cherish the two hours of each weekday where I could rush to the television set and watch my two favorite shows; Gilligan’s Island and The Beverly Hillbillies. As trivial as it may seem, these two shows, along with the weekly prime time show called Fantasy Island, marked me for life.
I dreamed of striking oil one day and having enough money to live in a mansion and be in a place like Beverly Hills. I dreamed of being able to go to an island one day and climb palm trees and eat coconuts. I dreamed of flying in on a float plane to a private island and being able to live out a fantasy week of pure utopian lifestyle. Because I immersed myself in to the world two of these shows daily, and one of them each week, the images and the dreams became deeply embedded in to the core of my soul.
In real life, I had the struggle between two worlds; a tension between two destinies.
Would I become a football coach, or would I chase my childhood fantasies of traveling the world and capturing all of the moments I saw modeled on these television shows? In our own way, we each face this dilemma. At some point, we get caught between the real life drama of our upbringing and what we are consistently exposed to on a daily basis and that of our childhood dreams and fantasies. Also at some point, for most, we have a myriad of circumstances, situations, setbacks, limited experiences, and discouraging words spoken to us that we tend to revert back to what we know best. What we know best is what we have been exposed to personally on a daily basis. What we are most familiar with becomes our reality, and our reality is what we begin to shrink back to. After college, I shrunk back to what I was most familiar with: coaching.
Reality is easy to live in because it does not require risk.
It does not require stepping out of your comfort zone. It does not require adjustment to new types or levels of pain. It doesn’t require additional hardship. We have become accustomed to coping with any present pain, discomfort, or hardship that our current reality brings us on a consistent basis. Reality management is the lifestyle choice of most people in today’s society. That’s why 70% or more of the working population are dissatisfied with what they do! They have shrunk back to their reality and familiar surroundings versus stepping in to the unknown.
Chasing your childhood dreams requires risks. There could be pain. There could be hardships, setbacks, disappointments, discouragements, and many other such things. However, that is merely part of the process of achieving all of your dreams.
What in the world is going to cause someone to capture, or recapture their childhood dreams? It will first take a flipping of a switch in your mind and in your heart. Just like a breaker that has blown, there has been no power flowing to the outlet of your dreams for quite some time, and it is going to take “flipping the breaker back on.” This is a conscious decision you will have to make.
In 1997, a man came in to my life who looked me in the eyes, spoke boldly to me about big dreams. He spoke boldly about designing a life. He spoke brilliantly about working in order to get paid for your value in the market place. I knew I was worth more than my $35,000 per year of salary for working 80 hours per week with a master’s degree, so his message resonated with me. He spoke courageously about walking the beaches of the world together. And he spoke wisely about the importance of learning how to earn residual income. The combination of all of these things ignited the deposits that The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, and Fantasy Island had put in to me. All of a sudden, the power began to run through my veins again! My heart was exploding with vision and passion to travel the world, to earn residual income like oil could provide, and to visit exotic places.
It wasn’t our $130 that we had in our bank account that mattered (or didn’t matter). It was the fact that the breaker that had been tripped up since I was a teenager had been turned back on again. Because the power of my childhood dreams had been awakened, I could channel my work efforts toward that particular dream. Since that time, we have “struck oil” three times. We have also earned residual income from other sources. We have been to so many islands like Hawaii, Bora Bora, Peter Island, Hamilton Island, and the Cayman Islands, and we have learned how to climb palm trees and shred coconuts. We have flown in on a float plane to a private island in Fiji called Turtle Island. Ironically, the 86 year old man who bought the island in the early 1970’s created a resort to accommodate future visitors who desired for all of their dreams to come true when they visited his island. Turtle Island was better than any episode that Fantasy Island ever played.
Your childhood dreams can be awakened today with a flipping of the switch. It is time to be courageous. It is time to be bold. It may be time for you to take some risks. And all of these things will require you to persevere through every trial, through every storm, and come back from every setback in the process. Too many people set sail in pursuit of their childhood dreams, yet they turn back at the first site of a thunderstorm.
In order for you to succeed in this process, you are going to have to become like the eagle, and set your eyes on the vision, fight through the storms, and you may very well come out on the other side with the outcome you once beheld. Never forget, what you behold has the clear potential to become a reality in your life.
