“My dream is to be independently wealthy.”

“I’m going to find the man of my dreams.”

“My dream car is a Lexus ES-300.”

“I visited Newport Beach and saw my dream house!”

How many times have you heard similar statements from friends?  And maybe you’ve even voiced a few wonderful ‘dreams’ yourself.  (I know I have!)  It’s great to have dreams!

According to millionaire author, Michael Masterson, any dream can become a goal if it meets the following criteria:

It must be Specific: Being independently wealthy is a dream. Developing a $3 million net worth in 5 years is a goal.

It must be Actionable: Winning the lottery is a dream. Building a successful business is a goal.

It must be Time-Oriented: “I’m going to be rich someday” is a dream.  “I’m going to develop a $3 million net worth in five years is a goal.

It must be Realistic: Developing a $3 million net worth in five years is reasonable (with a great action plan).  Developing a $3 million net worth in 3 months is not.  Although winning the lottery is possible, it is not at all realistic.  (Statistically, your odds of being struck by lightening are greater than your chance of winning the lottery.)

Dreaming feels good – and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with dreaming.  But if you’d like to ‘live your dream’ it MUST be turned into a goal.  Without goals, dreams seldom become reality.

A Harvard Business School study followed the financial status of a group of students 10 years after their graduation and found that:

- As many as 27 percent needed financial assistance.

- 60 percent were living paycheck to paycheck.

- Only 10 percent were living comfortably.

- A mere 3 percent of them were financially independent.

The study also found these interesting goal setting correlations:

- The 27 percent that needed financial assistance never set goals for themselves.

- The 10 percent that were living comfortably only had general goals.  

- The 3 percent that were financially independent had not only written out their goals – they also outlined and followed the steps required to reach those goals.

Even with a Harvard Business School degree, 97% were not wealthy.  The critical difference was goal setting.  To learn more about this click here http://www.abundance-of-wealth.cup-of-life.com/Wealth-Creation.html .

So hold on to your dreams!  Dreams are a wonderful thing.  But if you’d like to turn any of those dreams into reality, you must first turn the dream into a goal.

Walt Disney said “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

Goal setting may sound dreary to some people because it is associated with too much seriousness and toiling. Student who are taught goal setting the wrong way get a bad impression of this worthwhile exercise. ‘Dream setting’, on the other hand, emanates more positivity and hope.

Dreams are exciting. They put a smile on our faces. We yearn to achieve dreams and some people even dream about them. Accomplished people like Jesse Jackson, Christopher Reeve, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey have openly declared the power of dreams in helping them succeed. There is no doubt that dreams work for children as well. What teachers and parents may do is to help students see the academic perspective of their dreams.

Many children would ever have the dream to be pilots or astronauts. Adults should not only immediate acknowledge such dreams, but direct children towards achieving them. Tell them that to be a pilot or astronaut, they will have to do well enough for college. Ask a commitment of academic results from them. Let it come from the child himself so that he owns his dream and his commitment.

As featured in The Secret, dreams of individuals become extremely achievable when they are translated into visuals. Help your students or children come up with A4 posters with a visual of their dreams. Such personalized posters take less than 10 minutes to make with Google images and Microsoft PowerPoint today. Have the child put up this poster in their bedroom, or somewhere they can see it everyday. Inspiring learning and achieving dreams may be as simple as this.

As parents or educators, we regularly get caught up with work and fail to recognize the importance of acknowledging the dreams of our children. Let us not forget the way in which some of us managed to make it through high school and college. It could have been a whacky dream of becoming the first black president, or the dream of becoming an extremely smart scientist, or the dream to be a hot-selling author of millions of children books.

Of greater importance is that children have a reliable source of motivation that guide them in their daily decision making. Their worthy dreams are such a source. With a vivid image of LeBron James or Tiger Woods blazing in the subconscious mind of children, they are less likely to pick up that packet of junk food or idle in front of the computer the entire day. The dream of becoming a teacher may awaken a keen interest to school subjects or to people management, skills that they would otherwise not have bothered with at all.

As Eleanor Roosevelt very elegantly put, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams – it makes you stretch.”