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Where Does Innovation Come From?

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***THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE COMES FROM http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-28248286/where-does-innovation-come-from/ AND WAS NOT ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY THE DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT TEAM - WE JUST WANTED TO SHARE IT WITH YOU!***

Where Does Innovation Come From?

By 

STEVE TOBAK / 

MONEYWATCH/ August 29, 2011, 9:00 AM

Innovation is definitely a hot topic these days, but the one thing that's fuzzy for most people is where does it actually come from?

I mean, what makes one guy innovative and another, well, just a regular guy? Before we get into that, let me explain a few things about innovation.

For one thing, it's not the same as invention, although folks often confuse the two. Invention is a unique discovery or finding; innovation is introducing something new.

That may sound like semantics, and maybe it is, but at least in my mind, there's one big difference: innovation can be an application of someone else's invention in a new and practical way.

In Innovators Don't See Different Things - They See Things Differently, we talked about whatMalcolm Gladwell calls the Creation Myth: that an innovator may not be the guy who comes up with the idea but the guy who turns that idea into something people can use.

Indeed, innovation isn't a supernatural event, a preordained occurrence that only happens to certain people. And great innovators don't go from zero-to-great in a heartbeat. More often than not, they stand on the shoulders of giants, see things a little bit differently, or benefit from timing, opportunity, or luck.

For example:

• Steve Jobs didn't invent the GUI or the computer mouse, but when he saw them demonstrated, his mind was probably racing with practical applications.
• Howard Schultz didn't invent coffee, espresso, or cappuccino, but he has certainly been an innovator in bringing all that to the masses through Starbucks.
• McDonald's was the fast-food innovator, but I seriously doubt there are any real inventions under the golden arches.
• Bill Gates didn't invent the PC operating system and he certainly didn't come up with the idea of licensing technology, but his business model - combining the two - made Microsoft one of the most valuable and powerful companies in the world.

Having spent my entire career working with entrepreneurs and innovators in the high-tech industry, these are the 10 characteristics and methodologies that I think define innovative people:

Where Does Innovation Come From?

1. Standing on the shoulders of giants. Contrary to popular belief, innovation is often far more evolutionary than revolution, more practical and crafty than breakthrough invention. Most of the time you're repurposing somebody else's idea.
2. Left brain - right brain balance. The whole left brain - right brain thing is a myth, but metaphorically speaking, I think innovation often springs from a combination of inspirational thought (right brain) and practical need (left brain). They say necessity is the mother of invention; it's probably more true of innovation.
3. Belief that you're special. Many, if not most, innovative people have this sort of childish belief that they're special, destined for great things. The thought of doing something new and different - changing the world, as it were - can be daunting. Unless you truly believe it's your destiny, you'll probably be too scared to even try.
4. Questioning conventional wisdom, the status quo. If you even mention how things are doneor should be done to a true-blue entrepreneur or innovator, it's like nails screeching on a chalkboard.
5. Vision. Oftentimes, people just have a vision of how they think something should be. It's really that simple. But they're also driven to see it through, as in the next bullet ...
6. Driven by the need to prove something. Innovative people are definitely on a mission to prove something to somebody and half the time I don't even think they know who.
7. Problem solving. If you're not a problem solver, you're probably not going to come up with anything that anybody will find useful. Control freaks are natural problem solvers - they can barely walk down the street without seeing all sorts of things that can be done better.
8. Passion. Without passion and genuinely loving and caring about what you do, you simply won't have the resilience and stickwithitness to see innovation of any magnitude through. It's never just an idea - you have to actually do stuff with it.
9. Focused brainpower. Athletes will tell you success is all about focus: you can't hit a 100 mph fastball or catch a 30 yard pass with defenders all up in your face without it. It's the same with innovation. Ironically, people who appear to be all over the map with ADD-like symptoms can have rare moments of clarity when it all comes together.
10. Work stamina. There's loads of talk these days about working smarter, not harder, taking more breaks, etc. While I'm a big believer in not killing yourself with work, if you don't enjoy working and work stamina isn't in your blood, you're not likely to innovate a thing.

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7 Ways to Better Your Ability to Take Action

 

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***THIS ARTICLE COMES FROM: http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/grow-the-action-habit/ AND WAS NOT WRITTEN BY DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT!  JUST WANTED TO SHARE IT WITH YOU!***

7 Ways to Grow the Action Habit

POSTED ON AUGUST 22, 2007 BY EDITOR IN CHIEF, PICK THE BRAIN

People at the top of every profession share one quality — they get things done. This ability supercedes intelligence, talent, and connections in determining the size of your salary and the speed of your advancement.

Despite the simplicity of this concept there is a perpetual shortage of people who excel at getting results. The action habit — the habit of putting ideas into action now — is essential to getting things done. Here are 7 ways you can grow the action habit:

1. Don’t wait until conditions are perfect – If you’re waiting to start until conditions are perfect, you probably never will. There will always be something that isn’t quite right. Either the timing is off, the market is down, or there’s too much competition. In the real world there is no perfect time to start. You have to take action and deal with problems as they arise. The best time to start was last year. The second best time is right now.

2. Be a doer - Practice doing things rather than thinking about them. Do you want to start exercising? Do you have a great idea to pitch your boss? Do it today. The longer an idea sits in your head without being acted on, the weaker it becomes. After a few days the details gets hazy. After a week it’s forgotten completely. By becoming a doer you’ll get more done and stimulate new ideas in the process.

3. Remember that ideas alone don’t bring success – Ideas are important, but they’re only valuable after they’ve been implemented. One average idea that’s been put into action is more valuable than a dozen brilliant ideas that you’re saving for “some other day” or the “right opportunity”. If you have an idea the you really believe in, do something about it. Unless you take action it will never go anywhere.

4. Use action to cure fear – Have you ever noticed that the most difficult part of public speaking is waiting for your turn to speak? Even professional speakers and actors experience pre-performance anxiety. Once they get started the fear disappears. Action is the best cure for fear. The most difficult time to take action is the very first time. After the ball is rolling, you’ll build confidence and things will keep getting easier. Kill fear by taking action and build on that confidence.

5. Start your creative engine mechanically – One of the biggest misconceptions about creative work is that it can only be done when inspiration strikes. If you wait for inspiration to slap you in the face, your work sessions will be few and far between. Instead of waiting, start your creative motor mechanically. If you need to write something, force yourself to sit down and write. Put pen to paper. Brainstorm. Doodle. By moving your hands you’ll stimulate the flow of ideas and inspire yourself.

6. Live in the present - Focus on what you can do in the present moment. Don’t worry about what you should have done last week or what you might be able to do tomorrow. The only time you can affect is the present. If you speculate too much about the past or the future you won’t get anything done. Tomorrow or next week frequently turns into never.

7. Get down to business immediately – It’s common practice for people to socialize and make small talk at the beginning of meetings. The same is true for individual workers. How often do you check email or RSS feeds before doing any real work? These distractions will cost you serious time if you don’t bypass them and get down to business immediately. By becoming someone who gets to the point you’ll be more productive and people will look to you as a leader.

It takes courage to take action without instructions from the person in charge. Perhaps that’s why initiative is a rare quality that’s coveted by managers and executives everywhere. Seize the initiative. When you have a good idea, start implementing it without being told. Once people see you’re serious about getting things done they’ll want to join in. The people at the top don’t have anyone telling them what to do. If you want to join them, you should get used to acting independently.

 

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If You're Young - Take the Risks

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

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***THIS ARTICLE COMES FROM A BLOG BY SCOTT YOUNG.  WE LIKED HIS INSIGHTS ON TAKING RISKS YOU CAN FIND THE ORIGINAL BLOG HERE: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2012/01/23/young-take-risks/***

 

If You’re Young, Do Harder, Riskier Things

I get a lot of email. Most is encouraging, but now and then I get an email from a reader irate that one of my articles didn’t speak to them personally, so they write me a scathing critique.

A common template goes something like, “You think it’s easy to do _____. Just wait until you have kids, tons of debt and a mortgage bub.” The idea being that I’m somehow at fault for not giving them personalized advice because they had made poor life decisions.

But it does bring up a good point: if you’re young, it is easier to do harder and riskier things. If you’re smart, you take advantage of that.

Being Young and Taking Risks

When I say risks, I’m talking about the long-shot, high-reward, low-cost kind: starting a business, living in a different country or building something interesting.

Of course, you don’t need to be young to do any of these things. On the contrary, risky, difficult things would seem more feasible as you gain more experience and resources.

But the more you have, the harder it is to justify giving it up. There’s a lower opportunity cost to invest hundreds of hours in a speculative project when you’re earning $10 per hour than $100. Spending a year living abroad is harder if you need to convince a spouse or kids to come along for the ride.

You don’t need to be young to take on difficult, risky things. I know people twice my age who are more adventurous than I am. But the life trajectory people take usually makes it harder to do.

Why Do We Take Risks?

 

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***THIS IS A TIMES ARTICLE AND THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND HERE: http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1869106,00.html***

Why We Take Risks — It's the Dopamine

By Alice Park Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008

Risk-taking, by definition, defies logic. Reason can't explain why people do unpredictable things — like betting on blackjack or jumping out of planes — for little or, sometimes, no reward at all. There's the thrill, of course, but those brief moments of ecstasy aren't enough to keep most risk takers coming back for more — which they do, again and again, like addicts.

A new study by researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City suggests a biological explanation for why certain people tend to live life on the edge — it involves the neurotransmitter dopamine, the brain's feel-good chemical. (See the Year in Health, from A to Z.)

Dopamine is responsible for making us feel satisfied after a filling meal, happy when our favorite football team wins, or really happy when we use stimulating drugs like amphetamines or cocaine, which can artificially squeeze more dopamine out of the nerve cells in our brain. It's also responsible for the high we feel when we do something daring, like skiing down a double black diamond slope or skydiving out of a plane. In the risk taker's brain, researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience, there appear to be fewer dopamine-inhibiting receptors — meaning that daredevils' brains are more saturated with the chemical, predisposing them to keep taking risks and chasing the next high: driving too fast, drinking too much, overspending or even taking drugs.

Forbes: Take a Risk the Odds are Better than you Think

 

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***THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE COMES FROM FORBES, THE ORIGINAL SITE CAN BE FOUND HERE: http://www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2013/06/18/take-a-risk-the-odds-are-better-than-you-think/ THIS IS AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE***

Take A Risk: The Odds Are Better Than You Think

By: Margie Warrell

6/18/2013

As you look back on your career and life to date, where do you wished you’d been a little braver, trusted in yourself more, and been less cautious in the chances you took?

Anything come to mind?  When speaking to people in their forties and beyond, many tell me that if they could do their career over again, they’d have taken more risks, settled less and spoken up more often. In short, they wished they’d been more courageous in the risks they’d taken.  Perhaps you relate.

Often we know what it is we want to do, but we still don’t do it. Why? Because, as I wrote in my latest book Stop Playing Safe,  we are innately risk averse and afraid of putting our vulnerability on the line. The status quo, while not particularly fulfilling, can seem like an easier, softer, less scary, option.  Indeed, advances in brain imaging technology can now verify that we human beings are wired to be risk averse. In other words, we find it much easier to settle with the status quo, keep our mouths closed and our heads down rather than make a change, take a chance,  or speak up and engage in what I call a “courageous conversation.”

When weighing up whether to take an action that could leave us vulnerable to failing or some other form or loss (of reputation, money, social standing, pride etc), we have an innate tendency to misjudge four core elements in assessing risk.

1. We over-estimate the probability of something going wrong.  As Daniel Kahneman wrote inThinking,  Fast and Slow, when assessing risk, potential losses tend to loom larger than potential gains. That is, we tend to focus more on what might go wrong – what we might lose or sacrifice – than what might go right. Because what we focus on tends to magnify in our imaginations, it causes us to misjudge (and over-estimate) the likelihood of it occurring. Yet the reality is that the risk of something not working out is often not near as high as we estimate and the odds of it working out well, are often far better.

2. We exaggerate the consequences of what might happen if it does go wrong. This is what I refer to as ‘catastrophizing.’  We come up with  dire and dramatic worst-case scenario images in our minds-eye. Rather than assume that we would act quickly to head off or mitigate a situation if things started going off track, we imagine everything spiralling shockingly out of control while we passively stand by, conjuring up images of ourselves destitute, shunned by our family, ostracized by  our peers and forever shamed by our failure.  Okay, maybe I go too far. Maybe you don’t catastrophize quite so dramatically. But the point is, we are neurologically wired to exaggerate how bad things could be if our plans didn’t work out, and we fail to appreciate our ability to intervene to ward off further impact.

3. We under estimate our ability to handle the consequences of risk.  This goes hand in hand with the above, but is more focused on our capability over all.  And while I hate to say it, women are the biggest culprits when it comes to underestimating their abilities and buying into self-doubt. Too often we let our misgivings about whether we have what it takes to succeed get the better of us. The result is that we often avoid taking on new challenges (or proactively pursuing new opportunities) because we don’t trust sufficiently in our ability to rise to the challenges they involve.

While speaking at a women’s leadership event at Ernst & Young last week, the Sydney office managing partner, Lynn Kraus shared with me how she had declined an offer to take on the senior leadership role several times before finally accepting.  Each time she had turned it down, it was because she didn’t think she had the ability to succeed in the position. Looking back now, with the benefit of having been in the role for several years, Lynn realized that she’d been gravely underestimating herself. Fortunately for her,  those who saw her potential didn’t give up on her easily. Still, how often do we fail to judge our own capacity for risks – like taking on a bigger role or pursuing a lofty goal – accurately?  In my experience, it’s far too often.

4. We discount or deny the cost of inaction, and sticking with the status quo.  I wrote about this in a previous column titled The Parmenides Fallacy: Are You Ignoring the Cost of Inaction?   We tell ourselves “It’s not so bad” and delude ourselves with the hope that our circumstances will somehow just get better over time and things will just ‘sort themselves out.’   We come up with excuses for why sticking with the status quo is a feasible option; why playing safe and not putting ourselves at risk of failing or looking foolish is ‘sensible.”  In reality, things that aren’t working out well for us now only tend to get worse over time, not better, and issues remain unaddressed in our relationships and lives tend to grow larger, not smaller.

These four different human tendencies working together help to explain why so many supposedly smart people find themselves living in such a restricted circle of their potential, feeling dissatisfied in their careers, stuck in their relationships, and living lives they would never have chosen, much less have aspired to.

So how do we overcome our tendency to play safe and identify which risks are worth taking?  Start by asking yourself these three questions:

1. What would I do if I were being more courageous?  
2. How will inaction cost me one year from now if I do nothing?
3. Where is my fear of failure causing me to over-estimate the size of risk, under-estimate myself and holding me back from taking risks that would serve me (my business etc)? 

Whatever answers come into your mind, take notice!  They are pointing you to a brighter future that you can only create when you commit to taking bolder, more decisive and courageous actions.  Will there be risks involved? Of course!  But remember that you are wired to both overestimate the size of them and to underestimate your ability to handle them.  The truth is, as Lao Tsu wrote two thousand years ago, “You are capable of more than you think.”

If you’d like to watch a short video I made about the need to rethink risk, and to step boldly out of our comfort zone toward it, please click here.

Fear regret more than failure – history has shown that we fail far more from timidity than we do from over daring.  Or to quote a little Latin: Fortes fortuna adiuvat.

“Fortune favors the bold.”

 

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3 Facts about dreams that you maybe did not already know

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

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***THIS ARTICLE COMES FROM: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/10/09/3-fascinating-facts-about-dreams/  DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT DID NOT WRITE IT***

3 Fascinating Facts About Dreams

By MARGARITA TARTAKOVSKY, M.S. 
Associate Editor

“The biggest myth about dreams is that they are frivolous manifestations reflecting basic occurrences of our daily experiences,” said Chicago psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber.

But dreams are actually an important part of self-discovery. (More on that later.) Below are a few fascinating facts and findings about dreams.

1. People with disabilities dream as though they don’t have them.

The following is an excerpt from a person who participated in a dream study:

“I was supposed to and wanted to sing in the choir. I see a stage on which some singers, male and female, are standing… I am asked if I want to sing with them. ‘Me?’ I ask, ‘I don’t know if I am good enough.’ And already I am standing on the stage with the choir. In the front row, I see my mother, she is smiling at me… It is a nice feeling to be on stage and able to chant.”

What’s particularly curious about this dream is that the dreamer was born deaf and doesn’t speak. Recently, two studies published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition have found that people with disabilities still dream as though their impairments don’t exist.

 

One of the studies explored the dream diaries of 14 people with impairments (four born with paraplegia and 10 born deaf who can’t speak). Thirty-six able-bodied individuals served as controls. August 2011’s New Scientist featured the research, stating that findings showed that:

About 80 percent of the dream narratives of the deaf participants gave no indication of their impairment: many spoke in their dreams, while others could hear and understand spoken language. The dream reports of the people born paralyzed revealed something similar: they often walked, ran or swam, none of which they had ever done in their waking lives.

Even more interesting, the article states that: “…there was no difference between the number of such bodily movements in the dream reports of the people with paraplegia and in those of the deaf and able-bodied subjects.”

The second study found similar results. Researchers looked at the dream reports of 15 people who were either born with paraplegia or had it later in life (because of a spinal-cord injury). They also included 15 able-bodied controls. Their reports revealed that 14 of the participants with paraplegia had dreams that they were physically active. And they dreamed about walking just as often as the able-bodied participants.

One of the researchers, Ursula Voss at Germany’s University of Bonn, believes that “dreams are tapping into representations of limbs and movements that exist in the brain and which are independent of our waking reality,” she told the New Scientist. She and researcher Alan Hobson at Harvard Medical School speculate that the key is genetics. According to the magazine:

The pair say the recent dream studies suggest that our brain has the genetically determined ability to generate experiences that mimic life, including fully functioning limbs and senses, and that people who are born deaf or paralysed are likely tapping into these parts of the brain when they dream about things they cannot do while awake.

What Causes Those Freaky Dreams You Have At Night?

 

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***THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS FROM WEBMD.COM : http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/freaky-dreams-what-do-they-mean***

Freaky Dreams: What Do They Mean?

Whether it’s falling off a cliff or public nudity, find out what may be causing those vivid, crazy dreams.

By Suzanne Wright
WebMD Feature

Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

Consider this freaky dream. You're at a black-tie gala in a fancy hotel banquet room with lots of other people. You're all having a good time eating dinner, dancing, and talking. When it's time to go, you look for your purse, but it's gone. As you anxiously search for it, a fast-moving river appears out of nowhere, bisecting the room. Your purse is floating on the river, but you can't reach it. It is moving too swiftly. When you awaken, you're filled with a sense of panic.

Now if you plugged the dream into an online dream analyzer, such as you might find at Freakydreams.com, you'd learn that a purse is a symbol for wealth and resources, a hotel represents transition, and a river connotes emotion. Since you have been living through a kitchen remodeling -- with its attendant financial stresses and upheavals -- this dream echoes and amplifies what's going on in your waking life.

Causes of Fatigue and Sleepiness and How to Fight Them

What Are Dreams?

Human beings dream, and so do, scientists believe, most mammals and some birds. On the most basic level, a dream is the experience you have of envisioned images, sounds, or other sensations while you sleep. They are an internal mental process. But dreams are actually much more than that.

Sigmund Freud's theory was that your dreams are an expression of what you're repressing during the time you are awake. And Carl Jung believed that dreams provide messages about "lost" or "neglected" parts of our selves that need to be reintegrated. Many dreams simply come from a preoccupation with the day's activities. But some offer rich, symbolic expressions -- an interface between the conscious and the unconscious that can fill in the gaps of our self-knowledge and provide information and insight.

In his book The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination, Robert Moss writes, "Dreams are open vistas of possibility that take us beyond our everyday self-limiting beliefs and behaviors. Before we dismiss our dream lover, our dream home or our dream job as unattainable -- 'only a dream' -- we want to examine carefully whether there are clues in the dream that could help us to manifest that juicy vision."

Why Do We Dream?

Everyone dreams every night -- even if we don't remember our dreams.

Tom Scammell, MD, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, says no one knows why we dream. "There is a strong movement in the research community to research how sleep improves memory and learning," Scammell says. "One speculative possibility is that dreaming allows you the opportunity to practice things you may or may not ever have to do, like running away or fighting off a predator."

Three or four times a night, you have a period of sleep that lasts approximately 90 minutes called REM -- rapid eye movement -- sleep. It is during REM sleep that your brain is more active. And according to Scammell, it's then that conditions are right for "story-like" dreams that are rich in action, complexity, and emotion.

"You are most likely to recall dreams if you wake at the end of a REM episode," says Scammell. "Americans, who are chronically sleep-deprived, probably miss out on some REM sleep. This builds up pressure for REM sleep. So when you're catching up on your sleep, you may have more REM sleep with more intense dreams."

 

How to Make Your Dreams Come True - In a Step to Step Guide

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***THIS ARTICLE/STEP BY STEP GUIDE COMES FROM WIKIHOW - http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Dreams-Come-True ***

How to Make Your Dreams Come True

Edited by Michael Igioh, Puddy, Maluniu, Krystle and 13 others

Steps

1. Be specific about your dream. The first thing you need to do is to be specific about your dream, at least the one you want to work on now, the way to be very specific about your dreams is to write them in your dream journal
   
   
   
2. Turn your dream into a burning desire. You will need to turn your dream into a burning desire in your heart. A strong will to achieve your dreams boosts self-confidence and will aid you in pulling through some of the worst stages of life. The way to turn your dream into a burning desire is to believe that your dream is achievable and that you can achieve it.
   
   
   
   • Once it has become a burning desire you are no longer to refer to it as a dream, because the very nature of a dream gives the impression that it is not real.

What is Your Dream?

 

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***THIS ARTICLE COMES FROM http://www.success.com/articles/642-what-is-your-dream WE JUST WANTED TO SHARE IS WITH YOU!***

 

What is Your Dream?

Excerpt from Put Your Dream to the Test

What is your dream? Will you achieve your dream in your lifetime? I'm certain that you desire to. I'm sure you hope you will. But will you actually do it? What odds would you give yourself? One in five? One in a hundred? One in a million? How can you tell whether your chances are good or whether your dream will always remain exactly that—a dream? And are you willing to put it to the test?

Most people I know have a dream. In fact, I’ve asked hundreds, if not thousands, of people about their dream. Some willingly describe it with great detail and enthusiasm. Others are reluctant to talk about it. They seem embarrassed to say it out loud. These people have never tested their dream. They don’t know if others will laugh at them. They’re not sure if they’re aiming too high or too low. They don’t know if their dream is something they can really achieve or if they’re destined to fail.

Most people have no idea how to achieve their dreams. What they possess is a vague notion that there is something they would like to do someday or someone they would like to become. But they don’t know how to get from here to there. If that describes you, then you’ll be glad to know that there really is hope.

Know the Answers Before You Take the Test
When you were a kid in school, do you remember a teacher doing a review before a test and saying something like, “Pay attention now, because this is going to be on the test”? I do. The encouraging teachers who wanted to see their students succeed said things like that all the time. They wanted us to be prepared so we could do well. They put us to the test, but they set us up for success.

My desire is to be like one of those encouraging teachers to you. I want to prepare you to put your dream to the test so you can actually achieve it. How? I believe that if you know the right questions to ask yourself, and if you can answer these questions in an affirmative way, you will have an excellent chance of being able to achieve your dreams. The more questions you can answer positively, the greater the likelihood of success!

The Right and Wrong Picture of a Dream
I’ve studied successful people for almost 40 years. I’ve known hundreds of high-profile people who achieved big dreams. And I’ve achieved a few dreams of my own. What I’ve discovered is that a lot of people have misconceptions about dreams. Take a look at many of the things that people pursue and call dreams in their lives:

• Daydreams—Distractions from current work
• Pie-in-the-Sky Dreams—Wild ideas with no strategy or basis in reality
• Bad Dreams—Worries that breed fear and paralysis
• Idealistic Dreams—The way the world would be if you were in charge
• Vicarious Dreams—Dreams lived through others
• Romantic Dreams—Belief that some person will make you happy
• Career Dreams—Belief that career success will make you happy
• Destination Dreams—Belief that a position, title or award will make you happy
• Material Dreams—Belief that wealth or possessions will make you happy

If these aren’t good dreams—valid ones worthy of a person’s life—then what are? Here is my definition of a dream that can be put to the test and will pass: A dream is an inspiring picture of the future that energizes your mind, will and emotions, empowering you to do everything you can to achieve it. A dream worth pursuing is a picture and blueprint of a person’s purpose and potential. Or as my friend Sharon Hull says, “A dream is the seed of possibility planted in the soul of a human being, which calls him to pursue a unique path to the realization of his purpose.”

What Do You Have in Mind
Dreams are valuable commodities. They propel us forward. They give us energy. They make us enthusiastic. Everyone ought to have a dream. But what if you’re not sure whether you have a dream you want to pursue? Let’s face it. Many people were not encouraged to dream. Others have dreams but lose hope and set them aside.

I want you to know that there’s good news. You can find or recapture your dreams. And they can be big dreams, not that all dreams have to be huge to be worth pursuing. They just need to be bigger than you are. As actress Josie Bisset remarked, “Dreams come a size too big so we can grow into them.”

If you’ve given up hope, lost sight of your dream or never connected with something that you think is worth dreaming and working toward, perhaps it would help you to learn about the five most common reasons why people have trouble identifying their dream:

1. Some People Have Been Discouraged from Dreaming by Others
Many people have had their dreams knocked right out of them! The world is filled with dream crushers and idea killers.

2. Some People Are Hindered by Past Disappointments and Hurts
Disappointment is the gap that exists between expectation and reality. All of us have encountered that gap. When something goes wrong, we say, “I’ll never do that again!” What a mistake, especially when it comes to our dreams! Failure is the price we must pay to achieve success.

3. Some People Get in the Habit of Settling for Average
Columnist Maureen Dowd says, “The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.” Dreams require a person to stretch, to go beyond average. You can’t reach for a dream and remain safely mediocre at the same time. The two are incompatible.

4. Some People Lack the Confidence Needed to Pursue Their Dreams
Humor columnist Erma Bombeck observed, “It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” It takes confidence to talk about a dream and even more to pursue it. And sometimes confidence separates the people who dream and pursue those dreams from those who don’t.

5. Some People Lack the Imagination to Dream
How do people discover their dreams? By dreaming! That may sound overly simplistic, but that’s where it starts. Imagination is the soil that brings a dream to life.

Are You Ready to Put Your Dream to the Test?
OK, you may be saying to yourself, I’ve got a dream. I think it’s worth pursuing. Now what? How can I know that my odds are good for achieving it? That brings us to these questions:

1. The Ownership Question: Is my dream really my dream?
2. The Clarity Question: Do I clearly see my dream?
3. The Reality Question: Am I depending on factors within my control to achieve my dream?
4. The Passion Question: Does my dream compel me to follow it?
5. The Pathway Question: Do I have a strategy to reach my dream?
6. The People Question: Have I included the people I need to realize my dream?
7. The Cost Question: Am I willing to pay the price for my dream?
8. The Tenacity Question: Am I moving closer to my dream?
9. The Fulfillment Question: Does working toward my dream bring satisfaction?
10. The Significance Question: Does my dream benefit others?

I believe that if you really explore each question, examine yourself honestly and answer yes to all of them, the odds of your achieving your dream are very good. I truly believe that everyone has the potential to imagine a worthwhile dream, and most have the ability to achieve it. And it doesn’t matter how big or how seemingly outrageous your dream appears to others if your answers are yes to the Dream Test questions.

Speechwriter and comedy author Robert Orben asserted, “Always remember there are only two kinds of people in this world— the realists and the dreamers. The realists know where they’re going. The dreamers have already been there.” If you have defined your dream, then you’re ready to put it to the test and start going after it.

Can You Answer Yes to the Question: What Is My Dream?
If you are unsure of what your dream might be—either because you are afraid to dream or because you somehow lost your dream along the way—then start preparing yourself to receive your dream by exploring the following:

1. Mental preparation. Read and study in areas of your greatest interest.
2. Experiential preparation. Engage in activities in areas related to your interests.
3. Visual preparation. Put up pictures of people and things that inspire you.
4. Hero preparation. Read about and try to meet people you admire and who inspire you.
5. Physical preparation. Get your body in optimal shape to pursue your dream.
6. Spiritual preparation. Seek God’s help for a bigger-than-self dream.

Once you do these six things to put yourself in the best possible position to receive a dream, focus on discovering your dream. As you do, keep in mind the words of my agent, Matt Yates, who says, “A dream is what you desire if anything and everything is possible.”

 

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In a World Moving So Fast We Need to Have Patience

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

"Because Your Life is Worth it!"

Photo: www.homegrownlearners.com

 

***THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE COMES FROM: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/having-patience-when-time-is-moving-too-fast/ AND IS A WONDERFUL OPINION ARTICLE THAT WE HAD TO SHARE!***

 

Having Patience When Time Is Moving Too Fast

MAY. 1, 2013 

By SARAH MCCARTAN

 

Patience is a virtue. And I will never have enough.

If only I had listened to Justin Timberlake years ago when he sang, “What goes around comes all the way back around.” Now while I certainly realize that Justin was singing about karma being a total bitch, I have learned (the hard way of course) that things in life have a way of coming around, or coming back around, when the time is right. And this is where patience comes into the picture.

I will be the first to admit that it’s hard to have patience in a world that moves so very quickly, when time passes in the blink of an eye. It’s hard when you miss someone dear to you and want to hold them close, or at least see their smiling face in person and not only on a computer screen. It’s hard when you want to create work that is meaningful and find yourself wishing you had started sooner. It’s hard when you see time catching up to your loved ones. It’s hard when you once felt so young, and now suddenly you can feel yourself aging too. On the one hand you can’t rush timing, and on the other hand, you see that time is slipping away from you and feel as though you can barely hold on. But where does it go?