Daring to Dream and Daring To Dream Big Starts With Giving Yourself Permission

What role do dreams and aspirations have in your success? What can you do to move deliberately towards achieving your dreams? Why dream small when dreaming big will serve you better?

Our individual, family and international history is littered with stories and examples of people, teams, groups and nations who achieved extraordinary things because they dared to dream. And in most cases, they gave themselves permission to Dream Big.

Consider our very earliest explorers, setting out for who knows where and into the face of total unknown. This desire to explore the unknown continues with exploration of the universe and into our deepest oceans. Consider those who have toiled long and hard to bring society a cure for diseases such as leprosy and polio. Medical research continues to discover unlikely cures because someone dares to dream.

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We can all relate to Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards, the first ever British Winter Olympic ski-jumper and the very unlikely Jamaican Bobsled team. We cheered even louder because their dreams were never about the winning but rather about daring to believe that they could take part. In the case of the Jamaicans their dream was even more extraordinary because there is no snow in Jamaica and never, ever [until these guys] is Jamaica considered a candidate for the Winter Olympics. A men’s team has attended most every Winter Games since they first appeared in 1988 in Calgary. In 2018 a Jamaican women’s team entered for the first time and Nigeria became the first African nation to enter a women’s bobsled team. All because 30 years ago a group of guys dared to Dream Big and to step deliberately towards achieving their dream, their goal.

Eddie The Eagle was the first British ski-jumper to appear in the Olympics for 60 years and although he came last in both the 70m and 90m events in 1988, Eddie went on to become a real icon. He had no money, no coach, no equipment and no team mates. However, he had his dream and he was really determined. He did all sorts of crazy jobs, slept in his car and made sure that nothing would stand in the way of him jumping. Following one botched landing, he continued with his head tied up in a pillowcase toothache-fashion to keep a broken jaw in place. Eddies view was “I was a true amateur and embodied what the Olympic spirit is all about,” he says. “To me, competing was all that mattered. Americans are very much ‘Win! Win! Win!’ In England, we don’t give a fig whether you win. It’s great if you do, but we appreciate those who don’t. The failures are the people who never get off their bums. Anyone who has a go is a success.” Both Eddie and the Jamaican Bobsled team have had films made about their achievements – totally against the odds. Google them both to see Big Dreams in action.

Every day we use technology, without even thinking about it, in all areas of our lives and more and more we communicate with each other thanks to the dreams of those behind Apple, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and a wide variety of apps for our smartphones. All because someone dared to dream and had the courage to Dream Big.

Let’s come back and examine the comment that Eddie The Eagle made “Anyone who has a go is a success.”

What this means to me is that he was a success because he had a go. So did all of those early explorers and all the inventors who dreams we now use every single day. They had a dream. The dared to Dream Big and then……….most importantly of all, they had a go. They stepped towards their dream. They gave themselves permission to be successful. They gave themselves permission to fail and learn the lessons from failure. They gave themselves permission to be authentically themselves and to be gloriously happy some days and down in the dumps others. The critical factor here is being deliberate about taking action.

So… how does this all relate to you? How can you apply this information in your business and in your life? What can you do to begin to step deliberately towards achieving your dreams and aspirations? What can we learn from those who have gone before you?

Eight Steps to achieving your Dreams are:

• Give yourself permission to dream – Dream Big and dream in technicolour
• Keep a journal of your dreams, your thoughts and ideas so you can refer to them, tease them out, refine them, make them bigger and bolder, make them real
• Visualise what you are dreaming about – see yourself doing this, achieving this goal and feeling the emotions you will have as you celebrate success
• Write a list – like a brain dump – of all the things that you could do that will move you closer to your dream, breaking the bigger things down into a series of smaller actions
• Prioritise these actions selecting first those that will move you closer to your goal, small things that you can easily achieve in the next week or 10 days
• Get started and remember to tick things off your list as you do them, celebrating every single step no matter how small
• Remember fear is a liar – meet every fear head on, face them and do it anyway
• The best and biggest dreams take a while to achieve so keep going, keep picking yourself up after each and every set back and have another go

Following these eight steps will help you to give yourself permission to dream and to catch hold of that dream and turn it in to action. Writing the list of all the things that you could do that will move you closer to your dream will empower you to take action – no matter how small – towards a target that contributes to your dream. And once you start to take action, you will feel much more comfortable about giving yourself permission to be successful and to deal with the highs and lows of achieving your dream. How awesome would that be?

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