“The Way” To Your Dreams

Like most kids, I was a big dreamer growing up.  I had dreams of being a millionaire.  I had dreams of being in Hollywood and becoming a movie star.  And I even had dreams of being the President of the United States one day.  My life was full of dreams.  I entered college wanting to become a marine biologist.  I quickly gave that up due to long football workouts and hangovers, which caused me to skip biology labs.  I decided I didn’t want to work that hard in college.  I turned my focus to communications, and leaned toward becoming a sports reporter because I wanted to be on television.  I learned from my professor, who used to manage television stations, that my entry level salary would be about $700 per month as a reporter, so I ditched that idea!  As my college career approached its end, I reverted back to what I knew best and decided to become a coach, like my father.  My whole family, for the most part, had been educators and I was very familiar with this life.  I was also familiar with the fact that this meant I would be living paycheck to paycheck.

However, deep down inside, I always dreamed of earning millions of dollars and traveling the world.  I dreamed of getting to do things that I could not, nor could my parents afford to do.  Even though I dreamed about making millions and living a life of freedom, I was never taught or mentored as to how to find the path to earning millions.  No one ever told me very simple, common sense type lessons about what to look for or how to look for the millions that I wanted to earn.  Consequently, my wife and I struggled financially during our first 7 years of our marriage.

Diane had grown up in poverty, in a little town called Hunt, Texas.  Her father was a carpenter and he battled with alcoholism.  She lived in a little beat up house without air conditioning or heating, other than a fireplace.  But she was a dreamer too.  There were four different families who lived in her area that took her in on occasion and treated her like she was their own.  They would buy her shoes and clothes, and they would take her in to San Antonio with them to eat dinner, and treat her to other experiences.  She would spend time at their luxury homes and dream about having her own luxury home some day.  She, too, was looking for a way but did not have anyone in particular who was mentoring her.

You can be around wealthy people, but if they don’t take the time to teach and mentor you to have what they have, then they are basically sending you the message that you are not good enough or qualified to achieve what they have achieved.  Both Diane and I had been around a couple of highly successful and wealthy couples, but they never sat us down and gave us advice on how to achieve wealth.  Nor, did we have enough wisdom to approach them and ask them to teach us how to become wealthy.  We try as much as we can, to offer wealth building wisdom and insights to people in whom we are around.

So, let’s cut to the chase.  How do you find the “way” to your dreams coming true?  The answer will always lie in the places you go, the people you meet, and the books you read.  If you want your life to change, sometimes you have to be extracted out of your current environment and temporarily placed in a new atmosphere in order to expand your vision.  It could entail going to the mountains and experiencing sights and sounds that you’ve never experienced, or going to the beach and experiencing the beauty of the ocean and beaches that lie before you.  Retreat centers and camps are so powerful because of this very premise. People get out in to nature, out of their current surroundings, and their heart and mind begins to become open to new ideas and teachings that could very well change their life forever.

For you to find “a way” to fulfill all of your dreams, you must become an avid reader.  You need to start reading books that feed your mind with the very things that could launch you in to your personal destiny.  Forget about fiction, novels, and the television.  Start reading books about changing your mindset, about leadership, about financial increase and wealth.  Read books that will stimulate the creativity and imagination that has been lying dormant inside of you for all those years.  Find books that help you unleash the power of your thoughts and actions.

Lastly, pay attention to the people you hang around.  Coaches always tell their players, “I can tell what kind of life you live by the five people you hang around the most.”  Or, “You are who you hang around.”  As much as I didn’t believe this when I was a kid, I understand it completely now.  Quit hanging around broke people!  Start looking for new relationships.  Get involved in things that are going to stimulate a mindset for financial increase so that you can achieve your dreams.  As you do this, do not be afraid to approach people with wealth and ask them how to get it.  They may just tell you that you should read a certain book, and if they do, order that book as fast as you can and read it.  They may just give you five minutes of their time and wisdom, but that five minutes may change your life forever.  Be grateful for every morsel of wisdom you can acquire from any successful person you can.

As you pursue these things, you will wind up finding a way to go way beyond where you currently are.  The biggest lesson here is to not just recognize that someone is wealthy, but find out how they obtained their wealth.  Then, discover how any of the keys that they used to obtain wealth fit in to the piece of your life’s puzzle that is going to help you fulfill your destiny.