DREAM to Reality

Hey team.All right, so here we are again. What another beautiful day. I wanted to share with you—somebody took the word dream (you need to have a dream; it’s kind of how all business maybe starts), and they broke it down into an acronym. I kind of liked it, so I thought I’d share it with you.

DREAM stands for: Discipline, Routine, Education, Action, and Mentality.

You need to have these things for your dream to become a reality. If you want your dream to become a reality, then start with discipline. We’ve talked about that over these last few weeks—and probably over the last three or four years. I probably have a quote or a post or something somewhere that talks about discipline. You have to have the discipline. The discipline to do certain things. Sometimes, also, the discipline to not do certain things—things that are contrary to you accomplishing your dream.

For instance, if you’re trying to pay off a bill or a house or buy something important, going out and buying other things that aren’t as important—this is something I work with my boys on. David is my spender. He loves to spend. As soon as he gets money for grades or reading a book or whatever, he wants to get on Amazon and find something to buy.

He’ll say, “I want this. I want that. I want this.” And some of these are bigger items. Well, if you have something that is going to cost you $300, and then you go out and spend $50 here, $25 there, $18 here, $21 over there—at some point, will you ever grow to have $300 to buy that one thing you’re dreaming about? No, you won’t. You just won’t accomplish it because you don’t have the discipline.

Knowing when to say no to things, and also having the discipline to do the things that are required of you to accomplish your dream, is key.

The next is routine. Setting a routine that you’re doing those things every day. Every time you get your paycheck, you have money put away to save. You’re reading a book—you sit down at a certain time every day and you read 10 pages. Twelve books at the end of the year—guaranteed. Maybe 15, maybe more. Who knows? Depends on how thick the book is, I guess.

Education—what do you need to educate yourself? That can be college, that can be a class, that can be an online study, that can be going and getting a book to read at the library. Education comes in many forms. It can be doing an internship, or partnering with somebody and carrying their briefcase for a year.

You can do all kinds of things to grow and learn your craft and educate yourself to be better at something. So educate yourself.

Next is action. You’ve got to take action on your dream. That means you actually have to start doing something to accomplish it. You can know that you need discipline, you can know that you need routine, and you can know that you need some education. But if you don’t act on any of those things, your dream will still be a wish floating out there in no zone. You didn’t set any goals to it, you didn’t do anything. You didn’t put any action to it.

And the last one is mentality. If you’re going to accomplish your dreams, you have to have a mentality that you can accomplish your dreams.

You have to believe in yourself, and you have to believe in what you’re doing. You have to stay with it.

Because you will have dissenters. You will have people out there saying, “You can’t do this. This is too hard for you. You’re not smart enough. You didn’t get enough education.” This, that, and all those things.

Sometimes the biggest dissenter is the one brushing your teeth in the mirror—hearing yourself tell yourself these things consistently, over and over. How do I know that? Because I have some of the biggest dissenters in my life staring at me in the mirror. I sometimes tell myself I can’t do it.

And some of you are sitting there with your jaw just dropped open, thinking, “Chad, you are the most positive person I’ve ever met.” Yeah. I’m glad you noticed that. However, what I do privately and how I have to fight myself—I have to have that continued mentality. I have to tell myself, “No, you can do this.” And I have to fight myself sometimes.

I’ve also had many people in my life walk up and tell me, “You can’t do that. You can’t do that. You can’t do that.” And I’ve got some of those same people now going, “I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you did that.”

So what can you do? Some of it comes down to your own mentality—telling yourself “I can” and fighting through it.

If you want your dream to become a reality, remember: Discipline. Routine. Education. Action. Mentality.

God bless you. Have a wonderful week. I’ll talk to you next week.