We recently surprised the kids by taking them to see Disney’s live-action remake of Aladdin. (All five of us give it two thumbs up.)
Us grown-ups can see a movie like that, a fantastical tale of magic lamps and genies and three wishes, and acknowledge it as a work of fiction. And yet, when our own dreams don’t come true as fast as it takes a blue-skinned genie to snap his fingers, we think something is wrong.
Ok, maybe we don’t expect our dreams to come true the instant we wish for them, but I know there have been times in my life when the realization of a dream seemed to be in slow motion. It felt as other people were making things happen left and right, while I was stuck in neutral.
The truth is, most dreams – especially the worthwhile ones – take longer to materialize than we think they will.
The enthusiasm that accompanies us in the beginning is important. It is the rocket fuel that propels us forward, getting us to take that first step. But eventually, after the empty fuel tanks fall away, and the journey starts to feel longer than we expected, is when we need to rely on persistence.
Most dreams that seemed to come true overnight actually have an often invisible foundation that was built over years and years of toil. We only see the end result.
And the few dreams that actually do come out of nowhere – the one-hit wonders – mostly fade into oblivion as quickly as they arrived. There’s no staying power, because there’s no roots.
The good news I’d like to share is that there are things we can do to make our dreams come true faster than they ordinarily would. even though it’ll probably not happen as fast as we’d like.
That was the focus of the Coffee Chat Kim and I recorded recently. We are nineteen years into building our dream, and I’d say it took at least eight before we started to see some real, sustainable progress. But there are many things we did well that actually shortened our path – and several other lessons we learned the hard way – that we shared in our conversation that you can watch for free, here.
I invite you to grab yourself a hot or cold beverage and carve out some time to watch the video. I mostly just wanted to remind you that there is no magic lamp or big blue genie waiting to grant your request. But even though your dream might feel like it’s taking longer than it feels like it should, that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming true.
In the end, the most important part of any grand and noble dream is the person you become in the process of achieving it.