Learn the trick of how to create an enterprise out of your dreams, no matter how small your start may be, or irrespective of how humble your background may have been.
Every dream has it’s right environment that it operates, right tool that it employs, right time to function, right people to appreciate and aid its realization, right communication, right scope, right approach…right everything.
If the right time is applied to the wrong dream, or the wrong tools are applied to the right dream, you will not get to destination point. One must be sensitive enough to be able to discern these things. Not everybody will give you the right support, right advice, and right understanding, even right ears to encourage you to achieve your goals in life.
As we strive to realize our dream is also the possibility of failure! Eighty percent of this failure can be brought about by the wrong decisions and choices you make, while the vital twenty percent left is always brought about by the kind of people you surround yourself with.
When people who have excelled in one endeavour are talked about, people tend only to apprehend the glowing ends of the burning brand that props up that dream—which is the present celebrated success. Until then, we are blindfolded to what efforts, courage, determination, commitment etc that has gone into and is expended on that dream realization; which stem from personal convictions and commitment that nobody initially regards. Obama, Mohammed Ali, Wole Soyinka, Bob Marley, Gani Fawehinmi, Michael Jackson, just name them…
Everybody has a personal approach to this; it is a mental and psychological preparedness that forms the platform on which we must move towards the destination we wish to get to. For instance, for most people, dream management constitute as a fundamental basis;
*A constant study and evaluation of self and close observation of personal catalogue of role models, mentors (living or dead). I always do my best to keep a constant date with them, to steer me from every deviating tendencies. I will study, read and meditate on them long enough that I begin to see something about them that many people can never see. Then a set of dos and don’ts imposed on me by myself. Then a personal limit to everything I choose to embark on, no matter the pressure to indulge. Then a set of rules and principles that guide me in all decisions and choices I make on issues. Then a set of sacrificial impositions which I must adhere to in all I do or do not do. Then a strong vision of where I want be get to and achieve in life. Then a healthy concept of time and time limits to meet my goals, simple.
Everyone should develop one dream management technique, unique for himself at list on a short-term basis. This must be based however, on a specific, clear-cut foundation of your area of gifting, talent and endowment, which you have taken patience to discover without any iota of self-deceit.
What really motivates you? Self motivation is so key, that if your drives are imposed and comes to you the other way round, you can never be said to be on proper focus to achieve your dreams. For your dreams in life must be something that is self-generated and exciting to you.
There is not a prescribed, conscious procedure that you must adhere to, to get to destination point. It is just a recommendation of those things you must do or not do to keep your dreams constantly close (enclosed) to your breast, but most especially, how to make it stay there against all tempting alternatives that presents themselves as ‘the broad and easy way’
Dream management involves taking cognizance of dream mistakes. Outlining all errors we make in our petty self indulgences which at the long-run are counter-productive towards our dream fulfillment—our dreams should be sometimes separated from ourselves to enable for self evaluation. An objective analysis of where we are coming from, where we are and where we are going as against a backdrop of where we stand right now.
The size or expansion of your mental world determines the possibilities you can embrace in there.
Most times, do you know how difficult it is to sustain and keep at your dreams and goals in life? Do you know that society has no time for anything that takes too long? Do you know that friends lost faith when it comes to patience and perseverance? Do you know the human psyche naturally hates and loathes anything that suggests hardship and suffering? Are you really sure you want to make a concrete difference? Have you ever experience what it means to be left standing in the crowd alone? Start to prepare yourself now, for it is no bed of roses to climb up there!
‘’it’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference’’—Tom Brokaw.
STAGES IN DREAM DEVELOPMENT
Dreams often develop along these regular patterns in almost all men. But most importantly, we must learn to tend to our dreams as though we are in a literal garden—the garden of life! Let us take time to go through them one after the other:
v A little flame or an inner spark (motivational, intuitive): A little flame that is rekindled from our innermost sub-conscious. A stirring, an uncomfortable spark that keeps nudging at your super-conscious. Formless and without void, asking you to give it form and meaning. Often giving birth to something that later manifests its fleshly form in the physical. The promptings are not very defined initially and we wonder what it is that we really want, desire or strive towards? This stage can be hardly recognized except by those with a very keen perception formed in an original idea, ideology. It is rare and may be hard to comprehend unless by those who can sit down at it and give it expression. Many fail to do this and lost the opportunity to trap this intuitive promptings before they fizzle away. This is the promptings of your original talents, gifts, endowments etc. at the early stages of your maturity and understanding.
v A Mere Desire (wishful): So many casualties are found in this stage. They just die there for the better part of their planning, active life. It is wishful and will remain like that until you convert this desire to something that can breathe life. Here we need to apply some mild mental force to gravitate it into a dream. Desires are weak in nature, but very vital if you are in a course to achieve something worthwhile. Desires need further ingredients like action, belief and faith to process them into something substantial.
v A Dream (cognitive vision): Now that spark, that desire is gravitating towards more concrete form. The condiment of visions. Of real and actuated pursuit towards our goals in life. Dreams and visions most times seem to fuse into each other, but they are only closely related. To me the strong mental picture of a clearly defined dream is what I see as visions. Our dreams are elements of our inner-thought life; they form the bedrock of that launch pad we use to thrust ourselves ahead.
v A Goal (targeted drive): A goal in this scheme is like making pap or skimming milk. It continues to solidify further as the heat of the fire intensifies in the process of condensation. It thickens towards something which is the target. How fast is your goal in life thickening towards your target? This is the real aspect of physical application and activity; both mental and physical to rigorous accomplishments and actualization. This is like adding tangibility and substance to your earlier visions and dreams. This is where most of the work lies, when you need to translate your dreams into practical reality earmarked in time. Every other stage before or after, listed in this foregoing scheme is tilted towards either reinforcing or reducing the effectiveness of this goal stage.
‘’One step – choosing a goal and sticking to it – changes everything.’’—Scott Reed
v A Commitment (emotional inclination): In terms of your every day drive, activities; mental, ideological, philosophical and physiological towards meeting your set goal. Commitment is like breaking your goal down to greater meanings, essence, and relevance, to how you intend to reach and achieve them. This entail also guarding against deviations, distractions; internal and extraneous. What is the extent of your commitment to your goals? Do you know we can actually place value on commitment? Even evaluate the quality and substance of it? Can it withstand the test of other ‘desirable’ distractions, competing alternatives that present themselves as equally attractive, and rationale as against your definitely set goals? It is a common saying that you cannot pursue two rats at the same time. This is to emphasize how and why you must stick to one goal, one pursuit at a time—commitment.
v DEDICATION (conscious attachment): Just mildly and subtly saying screw tighter the knob of your commitment. In dedication we are moving towards a belief like level in our pursuit of our goals. A cause. A commanding ideology—though we have not attain the heights of fanatism yet, but we are well within the divine and delirious confines of belief. It is like a drugged feeling of attachment to your dreams, visions, goals etc. it is building a safe emotional heaven where nothing else can sway us from pursuing what we have set out and convinced ourselves we must achieve. It is ably aided by our intuitive realization of self in the direction we find fulfillment in taking. Convictions that our visions are clear enough, our dreams are desirable, our goals are attainable and we are working towards garnering the required means. Our dedication is enhanced when we realize the possibility of achieving what we have set out to do. All our thought processes is geared towards this cause. You cannot think otherwise. It dwells on faith; faith in self, faith in our abilities and faith in even that thing that defines our dreams and beliefs. In religious parlance it is referred to as consecration. Like immersion into the cause that guides your life and actions.
‘’The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.’’—Cecil B. DeMille
v A PASSION (compounded emotion): Now we are really in the arena of fanatism, extremism etc, albeit without the religious and spiritual aroma. This war of passion is mostly taken inwards and fought within the individual, the self suffers for the betterment of the whole and the future. Against the backdrop of constant competitions of individual striving we need to sieve out all what threatens and may threaten our dream attainment within the context of civil obedience and adherence to societal laws, norms, expectations and ethos, still staying within the ideal.
In the war of the mind
You stand alone in life.
You must come forth with a definite framework of personal/social morals, principles, character, attitudes, strategies and peculiar strengths etc. then you measure them singularly with what you set out to achieve—your dream or goal. Do they conflict in any form? Are there any meeting points; where are the areas of contentions and compromise?
But we can always realize dreams within the ambit of a well structured moral and civic framework. This is passion to do the right thing in the right time in the right direction to attain the right and predetermined, desired result. A do or die attitude that bans every immorality, every inclination towards crime and corruption, social ill, discrimination, unrighteousness, and instant money.
Anybody just chasing after wealth and money has already defeated his own inner ability and potential to realize his eternal dreams and self-fulfillment.
BE VERY SPECIFIC ABOUT WHAT YOU DEFINE AS YOUR DREAM
You cannot chase two rats at a time. You cannot be best in everything at the same time. You must pick an area of strength to be noticed and to excel.
Clearly defining your dreams helps you to know the direction of your passion. Most times what we refer to as our dreams are actually only our professions, careers, employment and other roles that the larger society forces upon us as means of survival in that society. No, this business of dreams goes deeper and beyond the mundane.
This is our lot in this country. We don’t either recognize or pursue opportunities, rather we look for already-made and whatever is thrown into our thighs, disguised as ‘opportunity’. Opportunity is that possibility for value you create with your own hands, your own natural gifted talent. We have so distorted the social base of our human development that we accept anything that comes to us as opportunity and call this planning, while our slave mentality is still strongly intact.
What most people presume to be their dreams and visions are not actually so. They are just their perceived personal convenient means to purchase for themselves survival or at most comfort while they exist on earth. May be we should try to separate the lines of dreams from ambition; goals from random struggling and attempts to achieve material comfort in life. For it is probable that material success cannot douse that fires of dreams and visions, but can only serve to stimulate them more, unlike ambition which is pyrrhic and easily quenched when the financial results starts pouring in. ambition does not carry the listed scheme of developmental stages outlined before. Or if it does at all, it will not be in the same measure as dreams and vision. What is the extent to which you are willing to stretch yourself to reach your dreams?
The goal in life as our society sees it is to gain material comfort and any means that aids someone to get there is acceptable and erroneously assume to be the dreams and visions of that person. Am trying to describe that other factor that goes beyond this mere attainment of the material and financial to an attainment of fulfillment, ideal, something like a calling in life, depending on what you are pursuing. It will always drag you back and create that dangerous disillusionment within you, until you get back in track. This is what the case with most of our people is often, we press for a target that is not actually the target because of our self-imposed social limitations. The goal and target of the society around us becomes our goals and targets—extricating ourselves becomes another difficult task as it will seem you are going out of course and against a certain establish trend…but remember, it talks just one man to cause a change in the world, not a crowd!
WHAT’S YOUR PASSIONS WORTH?
Only those who see the fields of their struggles in life as a battle field, succeeds.
The depth and strength of your passion for what you intend to achieve helps to define your dream. Defining your dream does not end in mere stating or knowing or declaring your intentions of what your dream is but how far you are willing to stand with it, even to defend it. Here we can now know how much you are serious about it. For fools can also command a capacity to lay claims to dreams.
Here you are, standing in the middle of the battle field—your own battle field! The battle you must create with your own hands. The battle of choices and decisions of life. How long are you willing to stay and sustain the choices you stand for, before you back down? In real battle situations you are left with only two choices; either to fight or to fight; either to win or to win.
I had this close friend once who served in the Nigerian foreign peace keeping mission in Liberia during their long drawn fratricidal civil war. In most situations and circumstances the ‘peace keeping’ actually results in pure situations of full-scale warfare with unfriendly rebel forces—as the whole nation was fragmented into warring factions, deadly and determined to die for their cause; which they feel is hindered by the unwelcomed presence of the ECOMOG troops. Often times these ECOMOG troops being in an alien, strange and unfamiliar country are caught in the midst of fierce, fearsome rebel combatants spoiling for bloodbaths, where they must fight their way out to survive and succeed.
That friend’s descriptions of these dire, precarious situations comes close to explaining passion to succeed in life— either you fight or you fight! Either you win or you win! These are the only two options offered. Any other deviation from this objective is a non-option at all—death! Which is a total stoppage to all efforts and possibilities. The reverse is, perchance you refuse to take the hard route or option—you are humble, liberal, considerate, conforming and docile. You are shy from stamping your feet on the ground to say this is what I must do or achieve, then the one and only other option will be either you die or you decline, that’s all! —your dreams die into that bland, docile zombie class, disillusioned in mass of nerveless under-achievers who make the bulk of people in the society today.
We are the society; we are the mind and brains of the society. Then why should we depend on the Society; which is an abstract concept of man’s creation; man coming together to meet our needs for association. Truly the society should depend on us and not the other way round.
THIS PASSION THING IS PURE NATURAL MAGIC
Almost everybody will tell you passion is everything and almost all we need to make our wishes come to pass. This is so true, despite the fact that we need other ingredients in the scale—conviction, faith, commitment etc, but this passion thing really works wonders beyond all human comprehension, so that almost everything can be attained through passion.
It works like this; after going through all the rudimentary processes of getting in focus towards your goal—finding your dream and purpose, building the requisite environment, preparatory to launching that dream. Once you get to that passion bus stop; which is the mindset to succeed no matter the circumstances, then you are poise for that divine, unexplained miracle that you can only call forth through passion. I think it works this way: as soon as you arrive at the stage call passion in any endeavour, your inner soul takes over the show completely. It becomes an affair of your inner-subconscious spirit. Your soul reaches out into the invincibility of your undiscovered esotheric potentials and pulls forth possibilities that you never knew existed within you before. You command a strength that goes beyond the abilities of your physical muscles. You will see youself unable to sleep, and going on hour upon hour, creativity upon creativity, zeal upon zeal without feeling weary;
There is an inexhaustible store of supply from passion
That is on the one hand. On the other hand, the forces of nature through the God laid down principles will call forth or cause all factors that work invincibly to facilitate the actualization of that dream, as long as it falls within what is good and desirable.
Passion can also be seen as a factor of production too. Or we can say it is the miracle in the factors of production. It simply makes production works. This is the mind factor in the factor of production! Have you seen any product come into reality, achievement or fruitfulness without the added ingredient of passion of the producer or originator of that invention? Think about this! Have you ever encountered any musician or painter, or writer that succeeds without adding passion as an ingredient to his effort? Have you come accross any successful discoverer, speech maker, inventor, that does not add passion as a final ingredient into his efforts???
BEWARE OF LAZINES
The costly price of life’s broken dreams. Don’t litter you path with debris of unfulfilled dreams like a broken down tram along the high-ways of your life. Construct your dreams safe from potholes on the tarmac of your life’s journey. It is better and safer that we do not even embark on pursuing our dreams at all, than to commence and stop at some point because of frustration—with this, depression and disillusionment hovers in the corner.
The strongest instigator of laziness is fear. Crippling fear! It is the underlying factor of inaction and paralyzing refusal to embark on anything to enhance the self. This is even worse than procrastination. You can dilly dally for a while until you get some stimulation and the best naturally emanate again. But laziness goes right into the subconscious. The fear even to learn or attempt anything grows by the day. Mental laziness is what am referring to now; which is the worst form of laziness, because it can be easily concealed and subverted to resemble something like a counterfeit strength, or caution, or carefulness or being ‘conservative’.
Worst of all, this laziness and fear at the long-run, after continual failures and apprehensions for the future is easily rationalized and subverted into forced philosophies of docility that the victim try to spread and share with others to hide his failures and poison further the generations. It is totally pernicious! When we say ‘the man speaks from experience’. Please check that ‘experience’ very well to ascertain if his experience he talks about is actually not his fears and failures of his life time.
Another danger is the fact that mental laziness can be conveniently concealed under a false impression of physical strength in a man’s life for years. It only begins to reveal itself at the later twilight of life when muscles begin to wane and physical activity invariably begins on a journey of decline and retardation.
The last and most important form of laziness observed though is found in a form that manifest itself in total deception. It is the form I call ‘the easy way out’ type of laziness. Or the laziness of escapism—the escapist outlet out of standing up to face their dreams in life.
WE MUST DIG DEEPER WITHIN OURSELVES TO DISCOVER OURSELVES
The brain is our central processing unit. It is also the center of efforts, creativity, endowments, etc. using your brain for your day to day living is not a matter of choice, not a necessity, but a must. The brain is also the link between our physical self and our mind, which creates mental power. To leave this vital instrument of the brain to fallow is actually to kill both the inner and outer self gradually, is to break the harmonious rhythm of the physical body and the soul in the appreciation of existence, thereby denying the dream of life no sunlight to blossom — we must practice a brain centered existence to progress in life.
Still I like to compare using and exercising our brains to practically pacing around your brain for impulses. Like somebody pacing the lush greenery of your lawn in an evening walk, luxuriating in the fresh air and letting every tension flow out of your veins, so that you can understand the vast landscape and environment better. This is the closest metaphor I can relate to it. It takes an open mind to grasp the depth of potentials of the self.
Succeeding in life depends on the strength of a man’s mental power, mental aptitude and mental output concentrated in the paths of his highest interest. The greatest challenge we face today in Africa is the almost total absence of mental life, mental initiative and mental power in our drive to achieve greater levels of success in life. Physical muscle cannot do it for us. The basic steps are;
*Stay active mentally as a first responsibility. Maintain a healthy mental life. Try and always act upon your more realistic mental fancy Create a vital realistic link between your mental fancy and your physical environment, be practical about your fancy Filter your mental life to see the activities which you can easily bring to reality Push yourself mentally further still. Constantly process information mentally on all aspect of life Cultivate strong analytical and creative mental instinct in life Finally, begin to settle on those aspects of both your physical and imaginative life that are most comfortable and convenient for your mental life—where you find natural harmony all the way through life. This will help you enjoy the slow attainment process of your dreams.
Without a healthy mental life, there is a grave danger of slipping off from our goals in life. If we can act upon only twenty percent of our most useful thoughts of a day, every day in our life, and form a habit and direction out of this, we can hardly fail in whatever we have chosen for ourselves to pursue in life.
The average man entertains nothing less than at least six thousand thoughts and ideas in a day. If he can separate useful and non-useful thoughts then go further to act on his useful and purposeful thoughts in a day, he might be able to bring into reality 20% of his thoughts which will be ultimately in line with fulfilling his destiny on earth. This is capable of keeping disillusionment and lack at bay from his life.
