Category: General

The Hidden Needs of Others

There is a YouTube video, link attached, that illustrates the true ability of a person to see behind the obvious. It is a video that is very strong and very powerful in communicating what goes on behind our perceptions. It is also a video that talks about ourselves and how we are motivated or defined by our attitude and how our attitude can be worked up in such a manner that we fail to see things as they really are.  

We have this in our lives everyday where we allow external factors to affect the way we are perceiving things or allow our attitudes to be affected. For example, you are in a management position and you work with customers. On most days, the customers’ energy is what brings you satisfaction and happiness in your position because most people enjoy shopping and making purchases, but occasionally you have that customer who is negative, complaining and it seems you simply can’t do anything to please this person. The longer this negative interaction continues, the more your attitude is soured for that hour or day. Therefore, for the remainder of that period, your perceptions of what you see and hear are tainted, all because of that one negative customer. Some people can allow that to roll off their shoulders and are able to maintain their positive attitude, but negative people drain us of our positive energy.  

Spending our day interacting with people can affect how we continue to communicate with others and how we treat them, and, I would say, how we are treated in return, because what we give is what we receive. It takes practice to train ourselves to be consistent in our actions and to be willing to understand the treatment we are receiving from others. We need to look in the mirror and see our reflection. It only requires taking a five second pause from what we’re doing, standing back and asking, “what’s going on, where are you right now, and where do you want to be?” This is something we normally don’t do but should.  The reflection we see is our attitude going to work on our perceptions.  Sometimes we are worked up to the point of being close to pulling an emotional “trigger”.  Emotional triggers come in many different situations – a teacher demeaning a student’s homework, an athlete who hears boos from the crowd. What does that do to his or her performance going forward? These determine how we communicate and how our attitude can change because of external factors.  

The reason we are talking about this today is because of our perceptions of others and whether we are actually seeing them or not and understanding what is going on behind the action. The video I mentioned really brings this to light, as it shows a man going through a typical day. It also shows how perceptions work him up toward his response level. He is looking at people through a certain filter and not seeing the entire picture. It is paramount for us as we go through each day, to understand where the other person is coming from. Unless we do not want to deal with people at all, it is always going to be something that we need to look at. Some people are very good at it and some are not. I know many people, who, when I enter a conversation with them, it is a very one-sided conversation. People love to talk about themselves and talk about themselves constantly. When they are doing that, obviously there are some thoughts and perceptions that are going on with the person they are talking to. For example, a thought might be I wonder if they’re ever going to ask about me? I wonder if they are even concerned about anything I am going through? I wonder how this person can be so egotistical? Each one of those thoughts or feelings creates a perception of the speaker, but if you turn it around and look at that person and wonder why they are talking so much and why are they so self-involved, there are probably multiple answers. We may never know where that person is coming from.  

The video below reflects what one person sees and what happens when he does not take into consideration other people’s needs.  When we all look at ourselves in the mirror and take the time to understand others, it means better communication for both sides and probably more understanding about the needs of other people.  

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Life’s Purpose – What Is Important to You?

Do you ever notice that life is cyclical?  It goes up and down and seems to do that all the time.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there could be some consistency in the way that our lives go?  The trouble with that idea is that with all the factors we are presented with in the course of living, it is very hard to control what we are faced with.  We encounter random events in our lives that shape who we are.  We know the path we are supposed to go down, but these events can sometimes derail those plans or veer us off into other paths. 

Consistency in life may be difficult, but we can, at least, find a path where we can make some ruts that will allow us to limit the “lows” and enjoy and maximize the “highs”.  So many books have been written about how all this can be done.  More importantly, the books have been written about how to find your life purpose.  In fact, that is what my business is all about.  How many people truly find their life purpose?  I would volunteer that most people are in the minority when it comes to this endeavor.  Still, finding life purpose is the key.  In other words, perhaps the definition of life purpose should be wrapped around the question: “What is important to you?”. 

When we begin to answer this question, the whole concept of life purpose can begin to take shape.  I compare seeking a life purpose to setting goals.  In setting goals, very often we set them lofty and very general.  Therefore, the goals become grandiose, out of scale, and, truth be told, impossible to attain.  It is when you break these goals down into bite-size pieces they become very attainable, yet on the path to that grand goal, we find some happiness and some sense of accomplishment.  It is this sense of accomplishment that encourages us to continue our journey toward that goal.  If we look at life purpose as the grand goal, we can see where frustration might come in.  We can see where the diverging paths send us to places we never intended to be.  If we take that grand goal of life purpose and break it down into the simple concept of “what is important to us,” we can then march toward our life purpose consistently, intentionally, and happily. 

The other benefit of looking at our life purpose as “what is important to us,” that it allows us to find constant reinforcement.  This allows us to ponder “importance” with every interaction, every conversation, every event and every breath we take.  For example, stop what you are doing right now.  Think about this: In the next hour “what is important to you?”  Really think about it!  Is what you doing now going to allow you to achieve what you deem most important?   Of course, I would say it is because we are learning how to move toward our life purpose and to embrace what we intend to do through doing what is most important to us. 

This blog is the first in a series talking about what life purpose means and the role that understanding what is important to you has in developing that purpose.  I would refer you to the following websites:  

www.fergussongroup.org  

www.achieveyourlifepurpose.com 

These web sites will help you continue the search but, in the meantime, take some time, quiet time, to ponder and write down what is important to you.  It doesn’t matter how big or small the issue may be, it is a starting place. 


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The Masks of Perception

When you have a conversation, do you ever wonder what the person to whom you’re speaking is thinking about? This is probably common in most conversations. When this happens, the course of the conversation changes based upon the perception of thoughts each one has of the other. These are the masks that we wear as we move through life. By wearing these masks, we are living in a world of perceptions.

In order to get to the reality of a conversation, we need to get to the cause of the perceptions, both from a sender’s and receivers’ perspective. It is a challenge of how clearly, we speak, or if we really listen. When you think about it, how much are we actually listening when we’re trying to determine exactly what the other person is saying? Life is so much about assumptions and how they play out. In fact, wars have been fought based upon assumptions, arguments occur based on perceptions, and, relationships are fractured based upon both.

In teaching communications between individuals, there are many filters we all go through in order to send our message. Additionally, these filters also work on the person who is attempting to receive the message. These filters are such things as gender, culture, age and many others. For example, when a “baby boomer” approaches a “millennial,” what is going through the thoughts of each? This is before a conversation has even started! We all have biases and prejudices that rise to the surface as we prepare to speak or listen. These issues many times are the ones that will create a disconnect in the conversation or, even worse, prevent a conversation from even happening. Again, this is even before any words have been spoken.
In business, communication can run into the same pitfalls. The issues may be lack of clarity, misunderstanding of the roles, lack of respect and speaking different languages just to name a few. When these issues are brought into play, the perception of the sender and receiver begins to waver off course. When this happens, it can be difficult to bring it back. Add to this, the issues we spoke to earlier, including age, gender, culture, etc. When you put all these together, it is a wonder that a message can be communicated at all. When you look of successful companies, you’ll notice a common theme about those organizations, includes clarity of purpose, mission and direction. How did they do that?

Before the masks of perception can be removed, a person must be disciplined enough to know how to prepare for each role of the activity of communication. Since senders are the drivers of the message, they must prepare to deliver it in a clear, unbiased manner. In the same manner, the receiver needs to take a deep breath and remove all the filters, so they can receive the message. Neither party needs to take long to go through this process. It only takes seconds to clear your mind of destructive filters. Key note: both individuals need to remember that we can learn something from everyone we encounter all the time. So, clear your mind, speak clearly and/or listen closely to gain knowledge in every conversation.

The masks that people wear are due to the perceptions they have regarding other people. These will determine what path the interaction will follow. If you want to have more meaningful conversations and gain more knowledge from the people with whom you interact, remove the masks.

When you do this, you’ll gain more respect and understanding from a person you talk to, as they will react to the value you show them by demonstrating sincere interest. In the end, the breadth of knowledge that you’ll gain will make that encounter incredibly special.

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Filling the Void

Throughout my travels I am constantly holding workshops, and when I do, I like to open with a brief introduction of each person, so I can learn, number one, what their name is, and number two, what their dreams or goals are. This gives me some information about the person. It tells me if they’ve thought about goals at all, it tells me if they were raised in a positive or negative environment, and it tells me if they are headed in a certain direction. It’s an eye-opening experience for me as a person doing the workshop.  

Sometimes it’s generational and sometimes not, as far as people having dreams, whether they believe they’re possible to attain, and how dreams and goals may or may not fit into their life plan. When I ask the question, I would say that many young people, and I’m using “young people” in a millennial sense, will say they don’t really have any dreams or goals.  

My next question to them is, “When you go home at night, what do you enjoy doing?” Many times, their answer is, “I go home and plan video games.” That’s it. There’s nothing beyond that. To me that is an expected answer and a disappointing and saddening answer because it means they believe on some level that they are unaware of their possibilities or abilities going forward, and that, to me, is a void that needs to be filled. This void is why many people never get ahead and sometimes there is a misunderstanding of what a dream or a goal is. Sometimes when you are going to a class or workshop on setting goals, they talk about all the different techniques of writing it down and setting a time frame, which I completely agree with, but on a more emotional level the act of simply thinking about, on a regular basis, what you want to do or accomplish can spur action if there are other factors involved. For example, I may not write down an action or goal of I want to quit smoking and the steps I’m going to take, but each time I think about quitting smoking, it plants a seed and it triggers something. For me personally, when I did quit smoking, it wasn’t a set of goals or steps, it was a sort of switch that was flipped in my head, and after the multiple attempts I had made to quit, this one took. It was just as though a switch turned off and I no longer had the urge to smoke. Now, that doesn’t mean that setting goals, writing them down and putting steps to them isn’t a valid way of achieving what you want in life. What I’m saying is that if your mind set is such that you are always thinking about the possibilities and where you want to go and what you want to do, you have that as a stimulus in your brain, that at some point is going to be activated.  

Something else that often disappoints me in my workshops is the response I receive when I ask participants, “Why don’t you have any dreams or goals?” I hear answers such as, “I’m just not smart” or “I never finished school” and I just want to grab my head in frustration because what all these people are doing is putting limitations on themselves. One person who told me this, I had spoken to during the workshop and knew that he was a bright individual and had some great ideas. To hear this was extremely disappointing because I knew it just wasn’t true, but somewhere in his past experience he had been told or convinced that he wasn’t smart. The fact of the matter was that he was one of the individuals who indicated that he played video games when he got home. I asked him why he didn’t start dreaming about something and he responded that he knew he should and that sometimes he thinks about it, but he just doesn’t take it any further than thinking about it.  

The last thought about filling a void – action. There is something to be said about doing anything at all. It doesn’t matter what it is but simply taking some type of action to begin realizing your dreams and goals. I recommended to this young man that he take fifteen minutes before he begins playing a video game and do something that will drive him toward an action, which will in turn get him closer to his dream or goal. He thought it was a great idea. The next thing we must do to help someone fill that void is to bring out what the dreams or goals are. What are the desires you have that you would like to see realized in your life? That’s what this is all about.  

I want to encourage everyone to take the time to sit quietly and think about where you are and where you could be. Do this on a regular basis. Come to a workshop called “Purpose” and follow that with our workshop on “Goals” if you want to act toward those dreams. This is called “filling the void.” 

www.fergussongroup.org

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Reality Exposed

Whether it be in business or life, we always run into situations that call for a decision. Whether we know it or not, we’re always making this decision based upon our knowledge, our experience, or our awareness around us. That decision is whether to be in the real world or be in a made-up world.

This may sound a little funny but what this is referring to is how we may appear, communicate or interact depending upon the situation. In other words, are we going to be completely truthful in the situation, are we going to be our natural self when we are involved in some way with another individual. Everyday we’re making those decisions. Every conversation means we are taking stock of the situation and responding in some way. Let me give you an example – let’s say you are preparing to ask someone to go to dinner and you perceive the person as an extrovert and you are not quite an extrovert but not a true introvert. In your judgment of the situation means you need to be very gregarious, outgoing and enthusiastic about the asking. Therefore, you are going a bit outside your normal personality. Now this is a very simple situation, but it does reflect how we tweak our realities based upon the perceptions we have of the situation or issue.

In other words, we want to try to establish our own reality in that situation and sometimes it means we must alter our own initial reality to get where we want to go or to receive what we want to receive. If you think about your own situations, how do you think different issues correlate to this? It is something we all run into from time to time, but it’s daily, if not hourly, that this situation happens because when you think about it, each time someone enters your space, they are changing your reality to a certain degree and you are changing your reality to a certain degree to adjust to whatever the issue may be.

It is said you should be true to your nature, but we can’t always do that because staying true to your nature means no one impacts you, no one changes the way you see things, so the way you see things is the way it is at that time. Is every reaction you have exactly who you are? Not necessarily. People change us just as much as we change them. What we need to be aware of is how much someone is changing our reality or how much we’re changing our reality for them.

Another example is if you look at business relationships such as boss to employee.  An employee is always trying to be the perfect subordinate even when that is not necessarily their nature or their reality. I’m not saying they should be a bad employee, I’m just saying they are not being themselves. When they are not being themselves and just saying what the boss wants to hear they are creating a perception that may not be reality.  We have to be aware of ourselves and who we are, and, unless we are aware of the nature of the person we are talking to, we can’t help but change some realities.  We have to make the choice of who we are  going to be and the frustration for many comes when they look back and realize, “that was not who I am”.

If we want to be as consistent as possible, we must know who we are and what we want and need to have a philosophy of life that initiates a nature that is easy to project. What that means is, if you have a philosophy of life that says, “seek happiness in everything you do,” then your projection reflects that attitude.

Typically, what you give is what you will receive. If you are consistent in what you project, then what you receive is going to be will be in like manner.  If you are always smiling at people, I would be willing to bet that you are constantly receiving smiles in return.
The bottom line is, know who you are, know what you want, know how to give, know your philosophy of life and understand as much as you can the nature of other people. Joy is found in drawing people into the reality of happiness and contentment.

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Dreams to Reality

In the vast area we call imagination it is incredible to think of what goes on there and what triggers the thoughts we have about our life and about our future. It is a wondrous thing to know that we can imagine anything we want in life and the only restraint we have is our own parameters or borders we place on ourselves. In other words, the entire space around us is our oyster.

We can do anything we want in our imagination and it is intriguing to think that we can work with people who lack imagination, at least initially. It is when the doors open in their mind, in their attitude, in their view of things, that they can realize there is so much more that could be theirs or could be their future.

When this is all being put together and developed, how do you take that imagination, develop that into what is called dreams and then turn that into reality? I think that much like the imagination itself, creating a reality can be just as difficult because of the parameters or borders we put on ourselves. As a racehorse going down the track with blinders on, sometimes that is the way we view our life and we are not open to what could be. So again, how do we turn dreams into reality?

Everything having to do with our mind and our attitude begins in our head. It is what is between the ears that is creating the will or the ability to move from dream to reality and sometimes the defining factors that will or will not move that dream to reality is a simple thing called fear. What happens if my dream actually comes true? How will I handle it? We must be willing to go out on a ledge and acknowledge the fact that what we imagined is coming true and then celebrate it, be joyful for it, feel gratitude. These are all the components that not only help you realize dreams, but help you appreciate them and dream more.

I think one of the things that folks don’t do is that they don’t dream big enough. They look at their current situation and decide that it is about as good as it will get. They don’t realize that our capacity for more is huge. We need to take that fear and turn it around. We need to understand that fear is just one of the components that we are always going to be running into. To turn dreams into reality you must first have the self-talk that says, “I can do it” and secondly, that the self-talk is saying “It’s coming to me, it’s being provided for me.” You also must have the self-talk that says, “I want to do this.” This is critical. Many people think of things but there isn’t much want to.

It is a matter of “I’m comfortable the way I am, so why should I grab more even though it is a dream of mine?” Once we have overcome the fear, once we realize that we have the want to, we must have the action. Dreams remain only dreams until action is put to them. When action is put to dreams, you have reality, and just imagine the reality of achieving a dream. It is something that we all want in our lives. We start out in life with high hopes, aspirations, goals, and yes, big dreams, but throughout the course of each segment of our life, we lose a component of that dream. We lose a segment that may be critical to moving it into reality. There comes a point, and maybe the point is right here reading this article, that you remove the fear, that you convince yourself of the want to, and you take action.

That last one, taking action, doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds. Sometimes people wait until all the pieces are in place before action is taken and sometimes people interpret action as being a huge project. Sometimes the smallest steps are the beginning to realizing a dream, so I say to you, take some time, look in a mirror and ask yourself “What are my dreams?” Take those first steps.

If you need guidance, accountability or just a mentor, click on the link below.

www.craigfergusson.com – Mini Workshops: “Purpose” & “Goal”

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The Brilliance of Life

In 1966 I had a profound experience that has remained with me throughout my life. I was fourteen years old at the time and, to my knowledge, I was off to an adventure that would be something different than I had ever known. Different in the fact that I had never been away from home that much and even though this was probably less than thirty miles away, it was still away from home and I was on my own. It was at Camp Sambica (I still remember the name) that we talked about dedicating our life to Christ, and I remember that for a while the thoughts were in one ear and out the other, until we had a campfire and expressed our commitments. Something powerful happened and my reality changed. I don’t know how to explain it; it was just that I knew I was on the right path and I had something to believe in. Although I had been going to church my entire life, all fourteen years of it, it never really impacted me as it did on that particular night.

The reason I bring this up is because our reality is shaped in so many different ways and my commitment at that point took many hits over the years as far as temptations and straying, but the basis for following a carpenter from 2000 years ago has always struck me as being something that was rather odd and why it was that one man would have such an effect.

As the years passed, I realized that the teachings of two things, love and learning, were the core of why I believed and why I followed. I have tried to take those core beliefs and apply them to other religions and find the love and learning there. Doing this has helped me understand the goodness of each one, and in finding that goodness, came tolerance and acceptance. It is interesting to go back and see, in a moment’s flash, the effect of a change of reality and what it can have on an entire life. Many people ask questions about different aspects of faith or religion, “what happens if”, “how can you justify this to that”.  I do not believe that it is my place to justify. My place is to accept what I believe, be true to my reality and try to have a perspective that is open to all. I do try to rationalize the different comments and how they apply to different social constructs and the events that occur within our world that seem to make no sense.

In every area of life there are events or occurrences that make no sense depending upon what your belief structure is or how you view life. If you view life as a struggle and as something that you are put here to simply get through, it is difficult to see the brilliance of life; however, if you look at it as a wondrous thing, for the time we are here, it should be a joy. In every situation, depending upon your faith and beliefs, you have the ability to see the joy or the happy outcome of whatever that situation might be.

We can look at all the world’s events and try to make sense of what is going on, but in the end, it comes down to each individual’s belief and how that impacts the overall global reality. If you have an attitude of love and learning, everything you look at or try to make sense of, you see as a learning experience, and, as in a previous blog, you really see what is going on, what went on, and what precluded the events that are happening.

I know personally that, many times, I wish I could have more of an impact on some of the events that precluded the actual occurrence. For now, I believe it is a matter of understanding who we are, and I allude to this in my workshop, that our purpose boils down to what is important to us. What is important to us isn’t necessarily global such as world peace but maybe is as simple as helping to guide our child to the next level in life and find happiness.  Or, doing what we can to assist our parents in having an old age that is full of contentment. In other words, our purpose in this life can be glorious, global and extravagant, or it can be simple, yet rewarding, depending upon what is important to us.

My advice to all is to find your brilliance in life by seeking the small as well as the large, truly loving, seeing and having an impact.  Your happiness will result in the learning and joy in the experience.

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Keeping a Broad Perspective

We all go through life, most of us with the best intentions, of what we want to do, who we want to be and where we want to go. Many times, we are offered different roads to take in order  to achieve those ends. What we determine those roads to be will give us the result that leads us to the next path.

As a child, we have a certain aspiration as to what we want our vocation to be, whether it be a fireman, a doctor, a lawyer, etc.. Children have these ideas in their minds and somewhere along the line they either become a reality or a different path is chosen, and that initial goal is never realized. Just think if everything we were able to dream were to come true. What would that look like and how would that manifest itself?

What so often happens is we lose our way. That is, we take paths that are not in line with what we intended to do. Sometimes we do this by choice and sometimes it is just a function of life events, so we need to be aware and open to all possibilities; hence, keeping a broad perspective. By doing so, we don’t let things slip by. We keep our eyes open to the dangers of a certain path or a decision that may not be in alignment with our intentions.

It is often said that it is a difficult road to try to find one’s life purpose, but that is because the road to finding one’s life purpose has so many paths that may be followed and the danger of taking one particular path and focusing on that path is that you lose perspective. You lose the ability to be open to all the possibilities. What is boils down to at times is, are we actually seeing what is before us? So often we go through life in a very superficial manner and we don’t see the truth, the value or the reality around us that is telling us what road we should be taking.

It is so important to dig deep and be a student of seeing the truth. When you do this, a whole array of possibilities springs up and your choices become much broader. If you have developed the art of seeing behind the screen, behind the shadows, those possibilities guide you into alignment with your purpose or your intention.

A favorite topic in business is “active listening.” This is nothing more than not being a superficial listener, but being present in the conversation and determining not only what is being said but who is saying it and what they mean. You have these separate components that come together – active listening and “deep seeing.” It is a combination that takes considerable practice. There are not many great listeners in the world nor are there many great “deep see-ers.” It is not a fault of anybody.  It is not how we were taught to see a person or to listen to a person, but when you do become present in the conversation your perspective broadens. Your possibilities become endless and you find a whole new world opening up to you.

“Look for the depth of a person’s intention.  It is only then you will                                                                     truly see.”                                                    

Craig Fergusson –January 5, 2018

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The Power and Perception of a Smile

A certain smile is the only thing that a person needs to change an interaction with another person. Sometimes a smile is the hardest thing to develop or to form when things aren’t going so well, but it really is one of the biggest skills that anyone can have. For example, watch people walking down the street. It doesn’t matter where you are, what area of the country, or what area of the city. What does matter is how are people doing? How are they looking? Are they looking? Are they smiling? Do they look you in the eye? The funny thing is that when someone looks at you with a smile on their face, what you will glean from their eyes is a positive, glowing look that gives you a sense of peace and appreciation for that person. Now, having said that, a smile cannot be insincere. You can’t just smile because you think that’s the thing to do, that it will make everything OK. In reality, it may make everything OK but it’s not the thing we’re used to.

We are used to judging people as we approach them. We are used to going through various filters to determine where that person is coming from, where they’ve been, what they’re thinking, or maybe how they’re going to respond to what we have to say. We have all these filters we go through and then we decide if we’re going to smile or not. Imagine if we had led with a smile.

Another area that many people struggle with is conflict resolution. No one likes to be in a conflict. People who say they do have an altered sense of self-worth or self-esteem. Conflict for conflict’s sake is like projecting an argument on someone. So we need to determine if we actually want to argue with someone. Is that the best way to communicate? Or do we need to step back, listen, smile at the person and try to understand where they’re coming from. If we do this, much of the conflict disappears. In customer service, when a customer has an objection or an argument about their service, what is the best way to resolve that? The first thing is, how is your body language when receiving that input? If you appear as if you’re prepared to go into an argument, it could be an unpleasant conversation. However, if you smile, ask how you can help them and ask what the situation is, then you simply be quiet and listen. You listen and then you listen more.

People like to get what is on their minds off their minds.  Being a willing, pleasant, positive listener resolves seventy-five percent of the conflict in a situation. You can apply this approach to many different conversations and situations. It is said that smiling requires many muscles to accomplish, many more than frowning, but like everything else we talk about in this blog, it’s all about your attitude. It takes very few conscious muscles to smile when that’s part of who you are; that you just break into a smile when you see someone, with the aim of making whatever that relationship is, a better one. The reality is, isn’t that what we really want to do? If I were to give anyone advice as to how to make an impression in someone’s life, it would be that with every person you come into contact with, whether it is verbally, with body language, whatever form, smile at them and listen. Smile and listen. I guarantee that those two components will create a relationship that is rewarding, informative, and will become more personal than any other relationship has ever been for you. Now when I’m talking about relationships, I’m not necessarily talking about personal relationships; I’m talking about any interaction with a person. People love to have interaction with others who will show them value and value is expressed by a willingness to listen and a willingness to inspire.

Sometimes you can include both those words, listen and inspire, into one phrase and make that part of who you are. What’s the most important thing to you? Is it to tell another person everything about yourself, all that you know, all you are worth, or is it to listen to that person? I guarantee that if you listen to someone else, you will become a better person, you will gain more knowledge, and you may experience something that you never would have expected. Expectations can be some of the most wonderful things that can happen and that’s what we need to look for. The bottom line is that it all started with a smile.

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To Dream….. To Do

How can our perceptions work magic for our reality?  We need to realize how dreams are developed and what part perception plays in them.  Additionally, when we get a firm grasp of our dream, do we proceed or let perceptions of fear or doubt extinguish those dreams.

Realities can be made up of dreams and sometimes this can be good.  On the other hand, negative realities can happen because of a lack of dreams.  When people are concerned that their circumstance will get no better, what they are left with is a “status quo” existence.

So, how does one get to turning the dream into reality?   Obviously, the first thing is to dream in the first place.  If the mind has nothing to work with, how can it ever form a perception of what “can be”.  Therefore, the trick is to dream and to dream big!

Many feel that his is all you have to do according to an interpretation of the Law of Attraction.  For a few, this might be the case, but for the rest of us, we have to “do”.  In other words, we have to continue the dream, develop the perception of its achievement and take consistent steps to make this all a reality.

As in goal setting, large goals are wonderful but it is in the completion of small steps that make the goal achievable.  I know that I have and will have very big goals.  I also know that the only way the goal will be achieved is accomplishing the steps to its attainment.  You may not be a goal setter but you have a destination in mind.  That destination is a dream ready to be realized.  Create a “To Do” list of the steps and check your progress!

If you need guidance or someone to drive fulfillment, visit My Dreams and Desires.  Share your journey and dream happily!