Goals and Dreams

Dallas, TX –

I had a dream last night…

Actually, I have dreams most nights.

But last night’s was particularly awesome.

In it, I was traveling to Europe.

Oh, wait; I’ve already done that.

I guess it was more like a rerun…

Oh well…

Still, it was a good dream.

As far as dreams go.

So, I’m working on my goal list for this year, and it struck me.

What’s the difference between a goal and a dream?

Not the kind of dream I have most nights, while asleep.
Usually while asleep.

There’ve been a couple of occasions I wasn’t too sure.
But that’s another story.

So, everyone has dreams about what’s going to happen in their life.

Travel the world.

Win the lottery.

Marry a movie star.

Insert your own fantasy here…

And everyone has goals, of some sort, for their life.

Even if that goal is to go home every night and sit on the couch playing video games.

Well, if that’s your goal, you probably also have a goal to reach the nth level in whatever game it is your playing at the moment.

See, that’s the thing about goals, even if you don’t think you have one, you have one.

It just may not be one you are aware you’ve picked.

That’s why I prefer to think about and write down my goals, fully aware that that’s what I’m doing. It’s my way of making sure they are goals and not just dreams.

So, what’s the difference?

To me, a goal is something that you are putting in some effort to achieve.

Well, there’s more to it than just putting in some effort.

Lots of people have a dream of winning the lottery, and they buy lottery tickets every week.

That’s putting in some effort toward hoping to achieve their dream.

But extremely few of them actually expect to win the lottery, and thus have their dream become reality.

Most people, when putting in some effort towards a goal, do expect to move closer to achieving it.

I guess that’s one of the differences – a goal is something that you expect to work your way closer to achieving, while a dream is something that you don’t expect to ever get any closer to than you are at this moment.

It’s like having a dream of writing a book.

I can’t count how many people, once they’ve heard that I’ve written several books (all technical, boring tomes. Nothing fun) come up to me and tell about how they’ve got an idea for a book they’re going to write.

Someday.

Usually, they’ve not done a single thing toward writing this book.

And they’re not going to lift a single finger in effort toward writing it either.

Because it’s nothing more than a dream.

Let me bring you in on a little secret.

Putting in effort is the key to achieving anything.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice.

How do you become a star athlete?

Practice.

How do you become a best-selling author?

Practice.

How do you win the lottery?

A whole lot of good luck. With that one, there’s no amount of practice you can do to get the least bit closer to achieving.

And considering how many lottery winners have said that it was the worst thing to ever happen to them, it’s questionable whether the luck needed is really good or bad.

Maybe it really takes a whole lot of bad luck.

Hmm…

Anyway, the thing is, it takes practice to get good at anything you want to do. Focused practice.

And in order to focus your practice, you need periodic guidance.

That’s why athletes need coaches, to guide their focus.

Musicians automatically receive guidance, once they start performing. It comes from their audience. Prior to that, they can get it from an instructor.

As for writers…

Some of the guidance received will be good, and some will be not so good. Maybe even bad.

Well, it doesn’t matter what you choose to pursue, it’s just about guaranteed that you’ll receive a certain amount of bad-to-awful guidance. You’ll just need to learn to recognize it as such so you can filter it out.

Unfortunately, for most of us, we choose to pursue careers where there are not a lot of good sources of guidance automatically coming to us. Instead, there’s a lot of negative criticism.

Criticism that is telling us what we should not do.

Some of this is aimed at truly trying to help us improve at what we do, even though it’s taking the wrong approach.

Including our internal critic.

We need to learn to turn this around from saying what we should not do, to advising on what we should do to improve and get better at what we do. This is what a good coach does, focuses us on what we should do, not what we shouldn’t.

Meanwhile, it’s our critics that tell us what we shouldn’t do.

And let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to be a critic than a coach. It’s a lot easier to point out mistakes than to come up with suggestions on how to improve.

Maybe that’s why a good coach is so much more valuable.

Anyway, I’m digressing.

Back to what I started on, goals and dreams.

See, to me, there’s a fundamental difference between goals and dreams.

You spend time working toward your goals.

Your dreams are often just some fantasy that you hope will land in your lap without having to actually do anything.

Goals don’t just happen on their own, they require effort.

And you have to make the time to work on your goals. No one has the time.

We’re all busy people, with lots of activity filling our days and nights. There’s never any extra time just laying around available for working on our goals.

You have to make the time.

You have to set aside a certain amount of time to work on your goals.

And you have to spend that time doing nothing but working toward your goals.

Not checking email.

Not surfing the web.

Not playing video games.

Working on your goals and nothing else.

That’s the only way it works.

A friend of mine’s father had a saying on his wall.

“All good things come to he who waits, provided he works like hell while waiting.”

Nothing gets achieved by just sitting around, twiddling our thumbs.

Everything we want to achieve takes effort.

Even if what we want to achieve is a certain high score in a video game.

Wait, I take that back. That one may actually be achievable by sitting around twiddling your thumbs…

Hmm…

Featured image by Nicole Pierce, used under the Creative Commons license.