Dreams to Destination

We all have dreams. According to me, life without dreams will be boring. And the beauty is that nobody can stop anyone of us from dreaming and dreaming big too. It is the birth right of every human being to have dreams. God has given this beautiful gift to the human beings that they can dream. Here I am not talking about the dreams that we see while sleeping but the dreams that don’t let us sleep; the dreams that we see during the day, the dreams that force us to work hard to achieve something big. In the words of Late Dr APJ Kalam: “Dream, Dream and Dream. Dreams transform into thoughts and thoughts result into action”.

Dreams can be as big as your imagination. And there is no limit to our imagination. Napoleon wrote, "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve”. The problem generally with the people from middle class, lower middle class and poor people is that their dreams are too low. The constraints and limitations in their life probably don’t let them fly on the wings of dreams. But the fact is that even the poor people dream. The difference is that their dreams are limited to the next higher orbit of prosperity or capability. Their imagination can take them to that level only. An illiterate poor farmer’s son staying in a village probably dreams of just passing the matriculation examination and getting a small job in a government office. Or he may dream of very good rain in the next season and a bumper crop so that his father can get him a new bicycle. The son of a Havaldar from army just dreams of becoming a commissioned officer in the Army. There is nothing wrong in this. But the fact is that nobody stops them from dreaming much higher; much bigger.

There are stories of a very large number of people across the world who were of a very mediocre or even poor background and yet they achieved great heights. A bit of deep study will reveal that all these people had great dreams. Even if they had lower level of dreams, they kept on raising the bar every time they achieved what they wanted. There was insatiable intense hunger in their belly to achieve more and more. There is another category of people who become stagnant, the moment they achieve their dream even half way. They call themselves highly satisfied people, but actually it is inertia that starts ruling their mind and they become stagnant. Their growth stops there only.

What we need is that we should have real high dreams, which many may feel as too high, beyond reach and unimaginable for you. Don’t worry about other people even if they laugh at you. Convert these dreams into strong desire and decide a direction for yourself to start moving in the direction of your dream. And this direction has to be followed with full dedication, determination and discipline. Most of the time your dream may look too distant and therefore it may be a bit vague too. So breakup your dream into small deadlines, may be a large number of them.

So to summarize the seven Ds for your journey from Dreams to Destination are:

1. Dream
2. Desire
3. Direction
4. Dedication
5. Determination
6. Discipline
7. Deadlines

These deadlines could be called your milestones on the way to your ultimate dream. They are your short term goals.

These goals are short term and therefore look within reach and you can work hard to achieve them. Just remember that these goals should be SMART goals. The SMART here stands for: Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound. Any goal that you set for yourself and it has these five characteristics, it is very highly likely that you shall achieve that. You keep achieving these small deadlines or goals one after the other and it will take you nearer and nearer to your ultimate cherished dream, your ultimate destination.

Let us assume that even if you are not able to achieve the ultimate dream but you have achieved some milestones in that direction. You have obviously moved nearer to your destination. That itself is a great achievement of having a dream and then following it with a strong desire, with a direction and following it with dedication, determination and discipline to reach somewhere closer to your destination.

Build a Dream and the Dream will build you. You must always remember that a dream with action is Commitment and a dream with inaction is nothing but Hallucination. So keep on working with your dreams with full devotion: day and night. This gives a focused approach in the life of a person and deviations and distractions are minimized. You start seeing the light on the other side of the tunnel much earlier in your life and that motivates you to move on and on.