Dream big dreams.

For the last couple of years I have been reading regularly my blogsphere friend Phil Gerbyshak’s blog: Make it great, but for one reason or another I did not have, or better said, did not give me the opportunity to read Phil’s book: 10 ways to make it great, until last weekend.

More than a regular book I would say this is a work book. More than a simple text providing new ideas, I would say that what’s really innovating in Phil’s proposal is the way he makes us remember the most simple, yet frequently forgotten ways to take our life to the next level and how simple it is to start immediately.
In summary I’d say this book is a daily guide to keep your north in your life.

I have to say that the concepts in this material are ideas that have been shared by great and important opinion leaders throughout history, so if we cannot say that Phil discovered a great revelation, we can certainly say he does a great job in preaching it and communicating it to others.

What revelation? Simple: Each one of us has the same ability to decide and choose to take clear steps to take our life from ordinary to extraordinary.

I’d hate to spoil the book for you so I will not discuss it further, and will limit my self to comment on one of the 10 practices the author recommends: “Dream big dreams, do big things”.

Definetely something key for taking your life to the greatness it deserves is DREAMING BIG. I know I’ve said this before, repeatedly, but I will not get tired of sharing it, because its true: “Every single thing you experience in life you create twice, first in your mind when you think it, imagine it, dread it or whish it, and then on the physical world when you actually live it".

So what better way to pre-create in your mind great things for you than dreaming? And I don’t mean dreaming about colored elephants, Pegasus and a dragon, but dreaming about our ideal life.

Ask yourself right now: What would your ideal life look like? What would you be doing, who would you be living with, who would be your closest friends, where would you live and how would your home look like? What would you be doing in a normal day? What things from your current life would you still have and what would you get rid off?
Think about it, if you get to answer at least some of these questions you would have taken a great first step. So what is next? Dream, think, project, draw, imagine, and create!

There are actually a lot of different ways to put this into practice, from writing in a single piece of paper a phrase that sums up your dream life statement to using images that you can download from the internet or cut from a magazine and that reflect that way of life you dream of. The objective at the end of the day is to have a guide that you can recur to every day, every morning, and every night to remember your dream, think about it and continue creating it.

In his book, Phil recommends having a “dream place”, a special place you can go to dream, it can be a certain corner in your home or office, it can be a park or a coffee shop or anywhere as long as it works for you to revisit your dreams.
Personally, after a good couple of years of working on a similar practice of creative visualization or dreaming big as my friend calls it, I’ve found that anyplace works for me as long as I have with me something to write with.
That something has become a permanent companion and along with my cell phone, my wallet and my watch, it goes with me almost everywhere I go: my journal.
In the pages of this old friend I enter all thoughts, ideas and feelings regarding many many things. I register how I reacted to a certain event, how I behaved during a specific situation, I draw images and concepts and write about whatever cool or crazy ideas I might have, like this blog that I have been writing for the last 20 months. So I can go back to it any time and study and learn from myself and about myself.
Dreaming big has really worked for me. Visualizing your life is really an excellent way to do great things and live a great life.

It may well be that each person has a different way of putting this principle into practice, it may be that each one already has special place to do so, it may also be that some have never done it, others stopped for a while and others are thinking of going back to it.

It doesn’t matter, what’s really important is that you never stop dreaming, never stop growing and never stop living the greatest life possible.