A few months ago, Dave Ramsey celebrated 20 years on the radio.
That is the equivalent of 834 regular years. Radio is that tough, that cut throat, and that difficult.
Suffice it to say, 20 years is an incredible accomplishment.
During a Q&A session, someone asked Dave a question. They said, “What was the moment you realized that you had arrived?”
Dave’s answer surprised everyone in the crowd.
One of the best tools I’ve ever used is the “later list.”
What’s that?
It’s exactly what it sounds like, things you’re going to do later. Know what is at the top of mine? “Do a ton of public speaking events.” Know when I’m going to do that? In 12 years, when both my kids are in college.
When I’m 48, my daughter McRae will be in college. It will just be Jenny and I holding down the fort. And hopefully, if things have gone well, I will be able to travel a whole lot to speaking events with my wife. Being home all the time won’t be the same priority because I’ll have my home, Jenny, with me.
So right now, I have to say no to some things. I have to compromise. I want to be an awesome dad. I want to not miss my kids’ childhoods. Of the two things, speaking a ton and my kids’ childhoods, I am crystal clear on which one I can replicate. I can always find new places to speak. I can never recreate my kids’ childhoods. I get one go-round at those. So I compromise. And what I get in return is far greater than anything I ever lose.
When you’re more awesome, more often, (which is what dream chasing is all about) you get to redesign the entire planet. I didn’t know that in high school, but that’s when I first bumped into this reality.
When I was in the 11th grade, a family in our town started to fall apart. The marriage was crumbling. They hated their jobs. Their house had radon. (That was the mold of my generation. Radon owned the 90s like MC Hammer owned baggy pants.)
Your dream will not make sense to everyone.
That is OK because you are not everyone. You are you. And if your dream made 100% sense to someone else, it wouldn’t be your dream–it would be theirs.
But instead, it’s a little weird, it’s a lot personal, and it’s yours.
Don’t round off the corners because someone who doesn’t have the same fire inside is confused. Don’t shape your square peg into a round peg because someone criticizes it. We’ve got enough of those dreams. We don’t need anymore. We need yours.
That’s the one that’s missing.
Yours.
Source: visualgraphic.tumblr.com via Jon on Pinterest
You have to love the act of dream chasing as much as the outcome, or you’ll be miserable.
How do I know? Because I’ve personally tried it, and I’ve seen hundreds of other people try it too.
Since the third grade, I knew I wanted to be an author. A teacher named Mrs. Harris laminated a book of my poetry, and I felt published. In that moment, I knew I wanted to publish a real book someday.
When we think about changing our lives and the world, we often think about adding things to our day.
We join a new gym.
We try a new diet.
We read a new book.
We add and add and add and then eventually wonder why our world feels fast and thin and out of time.
What if instead, you decided to delete something? What if you created a “to-don’t list,” something that lots of authors recommended? What if you macheted your calendar until only the most important things remained?
It’s possible. And more than that, it’s powerful.
And you just might be surprised at what you can see when you delete some of the clutter, because sometimes what remains is hidden unless we start deleting.
Like this sidewalk. Look what removing some dirt and grime revealed.
Source: blog.loku.com via Jon on Pinterest
What if you fail? That’s the fear, right? We try something, it goes horribly, and we look stupid.
Let me go ahead and deflate this concern. You’re going to fail.
You and I are going to fail at a lot of things. We’re going to be horrible! Especially at things we’ve never done before. But here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s what will save us – we’re going to fail at things that matter.
My thought is that if you’re going to risk, and maybe even fail, fail at something that matters, so that even in failure, lives are changed. That’s what I thought when we decided to raise an additional $30,000 and build a second kindergarten in Vietnam a few years ago on my blog. We already had our home run moment. We had our newspaper headline, “Blogger raises $30,000 in 18 hours.” We had succeeded! We could have put a period on the end of that sentence and moved on.
But it turns out that exclamation marks are a lot more fun. They’re harder to get, certainly, but they are way more awesome. So we decided to do it again–the day after we had finished the first campaign. I knew that if we failed and only raised $10,000, that money would still help kids in Vietnam. We would have failed, but the results would still be glorious. So my motto became “Fail Gloriously!”
The only real type of failure is when you succeed at something that doesn’t matter. That’s the kind of failure you should avoid at all possible costs.
Think about it. If you succeed at something that doesn’t matter, who cares? It doesn’t matter. If you fail at something that doesn’t matter, that’s twice as bad. You failed and the thing you gave your life to didn’t matter in the first place.
So do things that matter. And when fear tells you that you might fail, say “I know, but it will be glorious.”
Need a reminder of what focus looks like?
It looks like this monkey.
Focus on whatever you are working on with as much focus as this cowboy monkey.
And don’t ask questions about why he is so focused. Trying to unravel the absurdity of this photo will blow your mind.
Back in September, Rebecca Tudor had a blog, a few meetings a year with local practice owners, and a big dream for seeing change in the veterinary industry.
Changing an industry is a big dream. It’s the type of dream that ends conversations because people don’t know what to say next. It seems impossible.
And the truth is that the world has plenty of dreamers. It’s the doers that we need more of. The doers get stuff done.
Instead of staying a dreamer, Rebecca became a doer. She talked to my friends at Proof about how their Launch package could help her turn her dream into a brand and take it online where it can reach even more people.
Because a dream will stay a dream unless you decide to do something about it.
A few weeks ago (after several months of hard work), Rebecca – with the help of Proof – officially launched CatalystVETS. Proof hooked her up with a logo, website, business cards, a tool to build her email list, and – most importantly – a much clearer understanding of how she can tackle the issues facing her industry on a national scale.
The other thing Rebecca knows is that having a good brand doesn’t start or stop with design. It takes hustle to make it happen. And she’s not done hustling. By 2017, Rebecca wants CatalystVETS to have 100 partner animal hospitals and be the #1 blog in the veterinary industry.
By 2022, she wants CatalystVETS to be the premier veterinary leadership group in the United States and the national authority on how to successfully envision, create, and sustain your unique animal hospital.
It might happen slowly, but eventually the best dreams stop being dreams and start being something more real. And lot of times, it takes a good team to help you take that step.
As a special offer to the Quitter Community, Proof is offering a $500 discount on their LAUNCH package with the promo code “dreambig.”
