At the end of every year, I try to make time for introspection and thinking about the future.  When the mind is open, many things are possible.  Last night, while sleeping, I dreamed about priorities in a variety of ways.  When I awoke, the thought at the forefront of my mind was:

Dream It, Think It, and Do It, Now

I have long used a conceptual model like this for personal planning, and owe whatever successes I have had in life to a continuing process of dreaming, thinking, and doing.

The model is fairly simple and yet very powerful.  It has been used by many successful people for many years.

Dream It

Successful people develop goals, but where do those goals come from?  The source of goals in this model is in the “Dream It” portion of the chart.  If we are open to the world around us and to the opportunities it presents, we can dream and imagine what we would like to be, or what we would like to become.

The mind works in mysterious ways.  I’ve used the phrase “Dream It” to describe a process of thinking about life and the future.  Perhaps you dream or daydream.  Perhaps you have periods of intense introspection.

Napolean Hill wrote a book in 1937 titled Think and Grow Rich.  The book sold some 20 million copies, and you can still get yours by following the link.  I read this book in my twenties.  One of Napolean Hill’s most famous quotes is this:

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.

That advice, however, without more, is useless.  The mind can conceive many things and can believe them, whether good or bad.  When our minds cause us to focus on a dream in such a way that we set goals and then can get specific about them, the mind can help with the process.  But success takes more than just dreaming.  Dreams have to become concrete, and when dreams become concrete in the mind, they can become goals.

Remember, however, a dream is just that, a dream, unless we can turn it into something that is actionable, and an actionable dream is a goal that the mind has conceived and believed. With goals in mind, we move to phase two, or “Think It.”

Think It

With a goal, whatever that goal is, it is possible to think about it and to put the mind to work on figuring out ways to achieve that goal.  Most people have a few goals, sometimes in different areas of their lives.  Some goals are more concrete than others.

When the mind is working on ways to achieve goals, it (you) can think about the actions that will move you closer to achieving those goals.  Those actions can become specific things to do that you know you need to do.

My father told me on many occasions as a child:

Son, wishing never did anything.

Paraphrasing my father, I think I can safely say that thinking (by itself) never did anything either.

If we know our goals and they are meaningful goals to us, we can think about what we need to do along the way to achieve them.  “Thinking It” means thinking about the path forward from where we are today and setting specific tasks to get there.

So we have goals, perhaps one or two or several.  How do we get from just thinking about what needs to be done to doing it?

Do It, Now

If we have dreamed about and set some goals, and thought about what we actually need to do to achieve them, we can plan each day in such a way as to work on specific things (tasks) that will help us achieve our goals.  To do that, we need to set priorities among potentially competing goals based on what is going on in our lives, today.

But if we let what is going on keep us from setting priorities and achieving specific tasks today, or over a series of days and weeks, we are just dreaming or wishing.  And wishing never did anything.

It is only when we let our dreams become goals and think on them in such a way that we can develop an action plan for each day that we move along the path of achieving our dreams.  Repeating Napolean Hill:

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.

Well, the mind can achieve what it has conceived if we use our minds to believe in our goals, to think about them, and to develop specific things that need to be done.

But then, we have to do those things today, tomorrow, and each day of our lives.

This is not to say that life won’t get in the way and prevent the achieving of one or more specific tasks on any given day.

But if our minds keep working, they will direct us back on track and we will, over time, do those things necessary to achieve our goals.

In other words, the mind can conceive and believe in goals, and then, if the mind can direct us to move in the direction of our dreams and goals every day, or almost every day, then, the mind can achieve those goals.  We just have to help our minds.

A famous statement has been attributed to a number of folks over the years, but it goes like this:

Nothing happens until someone sells something.

In the context of this post, nothing happens until someone, i.e., you or me, does something.

Wrapping Up

The figure above looks static, but it is not.  We are always dreaming and formulating new goals or changing existing ones.  If we dream about a new goal, it becomes one that we must think about.  Perhaps it is a new goal, or maybe it replaces an existing goal.  In either event, the new goal goes through the same process of “Dream It, Think It, and Do It, Now” that our current goals follow.

And speaking of dreams, goals, and tasks, my new book on buy-sell agreements is in the editing process based on comments from numerous readers around the country.  There are lots of daily tasks that must be accomplished to achieve the target publication date in the first quarter of 2019.

If you would like to be added to the notification list for its publication, give me an email at mercerc@mercercapital.com

In the meantime, my best to all readers for dreaming, thinking, and doing in the coming year, and for a healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year in 2019!

Chris