Dreams Should Be Mixed With Reality

Today I am going to talk about a rather broad and ambiguous (but important, nevertheless) topic: Dreams and Reality.

Now I’m all for dreaming of doing big things in life. I want to have a nice-sized house some day that is a comfortable home for my family (which as of now consists of my wife and our 20-year old cat), a cabin on a Minnesota lake, a fat HSA & retirement account that will let me sleep soundly at night, and a few rental properties.

As of right now I am worth negative dollars. That’s right, our net worth is less than $0 because of our student loans. Some might look at the list of “wants” I just rattled off and think my head isn’t in sync with reality. But when people see how I spend my time, the effort I put in at work, my age, etc. I would hope they are relatively confident that my dreams really are in line with reality and are things that I can attain with enough hard work and some time.

I have met some people who have very ambitious dreams. Some want to launch companies that will eventually turn into a billion dollar businesses. Others just want to “start a small business.” Others fantasize over sport’s cars. Still others talk about traveling the world.

What is underlying all of these dreams is obvious: money

I find it unfortunate when people have some awesome dreams but never get around to mixing in a dose of reality. Dreams can be attained, it just takes a lot of hard work and perseverance.

If you want to travel the world you have to do a couple things:

1) Find out how you will set aside enough money to go.
2) Find a job/career that will let you take off enough time to do so.

If you want to live abroad you have to:

1) Find out how you will make an income while living there.
2) Actively put in the time to plan the transition.

I may be oversimplifying things here, but really all you need to do to fulfill dreams is figure out what you want and how you are going to get it. If you want to attain a net worth of $20 million by the time you retire, you are unlikely to do that if you just go to work each day and put no effort into wealth-generating activities outside of your 9-5 job (unless, of course, that job pays over $1 million a year…in which case you are just fine checking in and checking out each day).

There’s a reason why Timothy Ferriss The 4-Hour Workweek by talking about Dreamlines. It’s basically what I just described; write down your dreams, and write down what you would need to make them a reality.

This concept may be simple, but I think it would be beneficial for everyone if they sat down and figured out what they want to accomplish in life and, most importantly, how they plan on making it a reality.

What are your dreams? How do you plan on reaching them?

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Photo by Autoviva
 

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