Everyone knows that achieving success in life starts with a dream.
It doesn’t matter what kind of dreams we have, it just matters that we DO have dreams.
Without dreams life becomes empty, boring, depressing and hopeless.
One piece of advice that has been highlighted to me from my mentors in the last few years especially, is for me to get more clear on my dreams and to DREAM BIG.
I enjoy dream building and setting goals and such, but I have to admit that until recently I never took the process of dreaming big very seriously.
Most often I would just kind of think about and dream about the next step in my life, not something HUGE and massive out there.
Meaning, I have mostly been operating out of a short term 3-6 months or maybe 1 year time frame when it comes to my goals and dreams.
However, I recently discovered a flaw to this method of short-term dream building and I’m now starting to see the value of dreaming MUCH bigger than that.
How Subconscious Dream Building Can Sabotage Your Success
When I recently re-launched my TabletopGamer.com Blog, I didn’t really sit down to map out a long-term vision / dream for that project.
I simply re-launched that Blog, and I set some short-term goals for the next few months and I kind of figured that I would just figure things out along the way.
I didn’t really see the point of sitting down and DREAMING BIG when it comes to that Blog / Business I’m running in the tabletop gaming niche.
I know what short-term goals I’ve got and I’ve been working towards those, but I didn’t take the time to sit down and consider the long term.
What I didn’t realize though is that at the subconscious level, my mind had actually started to create a long-term vision of what my business / blog would look like, in that niche market, if I was to continue to be more and more successful with it.
It’s almost as if when we don’t consciously CREATE A VISION / BIG DREAM, our subconscious mind fills in that void with it’s own vision / big dream.
Now you might be thinking – “What’s wrong with that? If our subconscious mind is already automatically dreaming big on our behalf, why waste our time on it?”
Well, here’s the challenge with it…
You see, when our subconscious mind creates a long-term vision or “Big Dream” for a project we’re working on, it does so by compiling data from the external world and it essentially creates a vision based on an amalgamation of various visions and dreams that OTHER people in a specific niche have had.
For example, in the tabletop gaming niche there are about a dozen entrepreneurs who I have been following and watching videos from and reading blog posts from in that niche market.
This group of dozen or so entrepreneurs have built fairly successful businesses within that niche.
What I didn’t realize is that unconsciously my mind took the setup and structure of all these different businesses and kind of created a “BIG DREAM” for me based on a mish-mash of their business models.
Meaning, if we don’t paint a picture for our subconscious mind of what we want our success to look like, it will kind of make up it’s own definition for what success will look like in a specific niche.
As an example, most of the people who are running successful businesses within the tabletop gaming niche market have offices with staff / employees.
So unconsciously my mind created this “Dream” inside my mind where it was thinking that MY DREAM was to one day have a big office with staff / employees.
In reality though, that is NOT what I desire to do with my Blog / Business in the tabletop gaming niche.
I really enjoy being able to work from home, so I don’t really WANT to be running and managing an office full of employees.
However, because I didn’t specifically sit down and think about that and get clear on it (until a few days ago) – it seems that my subconscious mind kind of just created it’s own “BIG DREAM” which didn’t really match what I wanted.
Think of it this way… imagine if you grew up with a bunch of friends who started training at a gym and then later on ended up competing in body building competitions…
… now imagine you starting a workout program just to lose some weight and to put on some muscle and build strength…
… without really realizing it, your subconscious mind might be creating an unconscious “Big Dream” for you where if you continue to work out, you’ll eventually end up becoming a professional bodybuilding who competes just like your friends did…
Now, there is nothing wrong with that if you WANT to become a professional bodybuilder, but what if you don’t?
What if you have zero desire and actually DETEST the idea of competing as a bodybuilder professionally?
If that is the case, what can happen is that one part of your mind (your subconscious) may have this unconscious dream of you becoming a body builder if you keep working out, and another part of your mind (your conscious mind) may have decided that it would never want to do something like that.
A situation like this creates a mental-battle within your mind.
One part of you is excited about working out and getting in shape, and doesn’t want to have anything to do with professional bodybuilding…
… and another part of your mind is thinking that if you keep going to the gym, you’ll eventually become a professional bodybuilder.
So what happens in situations like these?
Self-sabotage!
You end up missing your workouts, you stop going to the gym, and you don’t even know why.
Well, one of the reasons why you might be self-sabotaging yourself is because a part of you is SCARED of achieving success in this field of your life because it thinks that it will lead to you having to do something that you don’t really want to do.
In the same way, when I started building my tabletop gaming blog, I realized that a part of my mind was staring to think that IF I become very successful with my blog in that niche market, I’ll eventually get to the point where I will *HAVE* to open up my own office or start running a tabletop gaming store or something like that.
Why?
Because in the absence of creating your own BIG DREAM, your subconscious mind will just create it’s own, and the BIG DREAM your subconscious mind creates will most likely not motivate you and it could even be sabotaging you!
This is why it’s SO IMPORTANT to sit down and to get clear on what your big dream is in your life and in your business.
When you get clear on that, your subconscious mind will start to attract resources, people and circumstances into your life to help you achieve YOUR DREAM.
If you don’t get clear on it though, your subconscious mind will attract resources, people and circumstances into your life to help IT achieve the dream that IT created for you, and chances are that dream will NOT be what you want exactly, and so you’ll constantly be fighting against your subconscious mind.
The Solution
The solution to this is to actually sit down and to DREAM BIG.
Try to imagine your blog, or your business, or your life becoming ultra successful in various stages of growth.
For example, if you just started your own business, imagine what it will be like when you’re making your first $500/month…
… and then what it will be like to be making $2500/month…
… and then what it will be like to be making $5000/month and $10,000/month and $25,000/month…
… and then what it will be like to be making $50,000/month and $100,000/month with your business…
… and then what it will be like to be making $250,000/month and $500,000/month and $1M/month with your business…
… and think about what it will be like to have 1 customer, 10 customers, 100 customers, 1000 customers or 10,000 customers in your business…
… basically just SCALE UP your business model from where it is now to much, much, much bigger numbers and visualize how you will want your business to work on this large scale…
If you create a BIG DREAM for yourself, and you write it down and you constantly refer to it, it will stop your subconscious mind from going out there and trying to create it’s own “Big Dream” from some kind of mish-mash of other people’s dreams.
You’ll be WAY more motivated to focus on taking the next step towards achieving YOUR dream.
Try it out.
