When you give yourself over to your dreams, you show that you really mean to make them come true. To commit to something is to pledge unwavering support; to entrust in your dreams is to stand behind them.
This oath of loyalty is something that most people are not willing to do. The reason for this is that it makes them uncomfortable. What if they need to change it? What if they don’t feel like doing it tomorrow?
This lack of commitment results in a withholding of the force necessary to deal with all the problematic situations pursing the dream will unfold for you.
A problem is an inability to resolve something because of lack of knowledge or resources on how to solve it. If you knew what to do and how to do it, if you had all the resources you needed to take care of an issue, it would not be a problem.
A dream is always a problem because it is asking you to be more than you currently are being. If you had all the skills, talent, knowledge and resources to make it happen, it would already be part of your reality.
Thus a dream, like a problem, proposes a gap. This is a gap of where you are now to where you want to be.
Now the only way to solve a problem or to make a dream come true is to have the will to do it. Once the energy of will is awoken, then the energy of creative thinking comes into play. And all this, of course, takes commitment, the willingness to do whatever it takes to make something new, better, and different happen for you.
Once you engage with your dream, it engages with you. The scene is set for the deeper part of your mind to now go to work on making things happen. Before your commitment that part of your mind did not have sufficient permission to hone in on your target.
Let us, for the sake of this discussion, call that deep part of the mind, the subconscious dream-delivery mechanism.
This mechanism once it is set in motion immediately begins a lesson review. What lessons have you learned in the past to help you with this dream? Then it proposes new lessons for you to learn. Some of these will be pleasant, others will be very new, and you will feel clumsy and awkward, even afraid, as you start to learn them.
The next thing it does is to look at constraints. What is the bottleneck to your productivity? Where are you stuck? What needs to be overcome, either internally or externally, to make something better happen?
Here, then, is a summary of the process of dream-creation.
First, there is the dream. It is a mixture of idea, desire, fear and excitement. It challenges you to be more than you currently are being; it pushes you to experience more than you are currently experiencing; it promises your life a new, bolder, more entrancing possibility.
Second, there is the commitment to the dream. “Yes,” you say, “I believe in the value of this dream both today and tomorrow. My mind is set. My course is determined. I am willing to put the full force of my mind to work on this dream until it becomes my reality. I am willing to engage in this dream fully and completely and do whatever it takes to make it come true.”
Third, the commitment then kicks into motion your subconscious dream delivery mechanism. You review what you know now and you begin the journey of learning what you do not currently know. In addition, you see what obstacles stand in your way and work on removing them.
W.H. Murray of the Scottish Himalayan expedition described the process of making your dreams come true in the following way:
“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect of one of Goethe’s couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
Success is not easy. It seldom happens by itself. It needs you to engage it.
