IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN DO IT

To me, this means pretty much what it says. Now like most simple quotes, there’s a lot more going on. But on the surface, it’s pretty straight forward. The first part, “If you can dream it,” to me says “If you can put the thoughts that make up a thing together in your head,”. The second part, “you can do it.” to me says “you can make that thought a reality.” So, to me, this statement is about dreaming great and beautiful things, and making them so powerful in your head that you simply must make them come to life. Once you have a sufficiently big reason why something must be done, the actual doing simply becomes a numbers game. Ask often enough for help, assistance, and support and share a compelling dream, then you will eventually make it happen. But first comes the dream.

Now when the term ‘dream’ is used, some people think of a flight of fancy, while others see a beautiful and compelling future that they can attain. Which one did Dr Martin Luther King Jr. share with us in his famous speech? While to some, it may have been the former, too many of us (both then and now) it is the latter. While we are closer to that dream, we are not yet there. But we get closer and closer all the time. For the purposes of this article, we will define a dream as a vision of a compelling future, which provides inspiration and motivation for the dreamer. The last two bits, inspiration and motivation, they are important. Without those, the dream will die when confronted by the realities involved in making it happen.

Great lengths of time, Herculean efforts, late nights, early mornings, massive efforts (which only gain you another failure, again and again), these are all part of the price you will pay, if you are to make your dream a reality. And that’s where the inspiration and motivation come in, they keep the fires burning when the world tries to pour cold water over you and your dream.

How many of you ever saw a TV show like the Jetsons and wondered where are the flying cars? How about Star Trek and the transporters or food replicators? While those inventions still are compelling, they are also still in the future. However, robotic floor cleaners exist (our kids named ours “Rosie,” after the Jetson’s maid-bot), and you can’t walk by a gym without seeing the treadmills made famous by George taking Astro out for a walk. If you prefer Star Trek, compare the old-style communicators with flip phones, or the newer chest/badge communicators with a Bluetooth headset and you’ll see that some dreams can be done. While satellite phones are a bit bulky today, so were cell phones from the 1980’s.

Then there is all the medical equipment from Star Trek, scanners and diagnostic equipment that boggle the mind, when you look at the actual operating principles and the science involved. More dreams from both shows are becoming reality with every passing day. Do you have a dream, a thought or an idea that keeps you up at night? Perhaps you had one when you were younger, but have set it aside because now you were a “grown up”? Dr. Seuss was a grown up too. The people who make Lego are grown up as well. Don’t let your age stop you from having, and working on, your dream. Perhaps you have to modify it, I still would love to play football in the NFL, but my body isn’t capable of that level of effort anymore. But there are other things I can do. How about you? Have you thought of any dreams, either present ones, or ones from your past?

The next step, once you have a dream, is to make it compelling. What would the realization of the dream, or even a portion of it, mean to you, your family, your friends, or even the rest of humanity? The more compelling the dream, the easier it is to go through the inevitable low spots. You can start small, and work on a portion of the dream, or start locally, instead of going global in a single push. Expect setbacks; expect to use PlanB or PlanC at some point. Expect to be knocked down. Plan to get back up again and again. That’s just how life goes.

But if you can keep your dream alive, you can, with careful observation of feedback and some creative thinking, achieve some portion of your dream. Just be sure you never run out of dreams. No matter what you accomplish, you can always do more. And someone out there is counting on you. What makes a difference between myself and the next person is that I sleep, dream and wake up to put my dreams into action when others sleep, dream, dream and dream until they depart from planet earth hence the most fertile and intellectually organic place is the cemetery where a lot of people were buried with their music still playing within them.Dont make up those numbers then, you can do it and do it better, you just need to be pro-active.

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