7 Questions To Make Sure You Have A Dream Worth Chasing

We all aspire to be a certain person or do certain things, but often we leave the details as vague “maybe’s” or hope that fate will guide us somewhere.

We all have beautiful talents and wild ambitions that have been covered up by dream blockers like fear and doubt. 

Most times we don’t even know that we are blocking our dreams because it happens in our subconscious. 

The good news is, we can learn to dream again.

And the most efficient way to do so is to start naming our dreams. 

Start Naming Your One Big Dream

Our goal right now should be to pick one area we are really passionate about pursuing. It could be something we’ve known since we were a little kid, or something we just decided today. 

With all the work we’ve done over the past bunch of episodes, you should be able to decide “What is your ONE thing?” If not, you can go back to JKL Episode 72 “3 Fun Questions to help you choose your big goal in life” or just DM me and I’ll try to help ya out.

What Is A Dream?

Once you have that one thing you want to pursue then we need to craft what we will call a “Dream”. 

Dreams come in all shapes and sizes from daydreams about fairies, or zombies to lifelong goals of being the president, or prime minister, or winning a sports championship.

That is why for the purpose of goalsetting we need a framework to qualify something as a dream worth going after. 

The key is to come up with dreams that pass the Dream Filter. Before we talk about what a dream is, let’s quickly look at what it is not.

What Does Not Count As A Dream?

Our goal to this point has been to choose one passion to focus on.

But, choosing one thing to focus on can be very scary.

One of the best ways to take a step forward is to learn to filter your dreams.

It’s valuable to know what is not considered a Dream when it comes to goal setting. Here are a few examples of what is NOT considered a dream in this case:

1. Living Vicariously: picturing living the life, or wanting the life of someone else.
2. Career Accomplishments: believing that the pursuit of a title, role, or reward in your job will bring you fulfillment.
3. Material Attainment: thinking that possessions, such as a new house, clothing, cars, or lifestyle will make you feel better someday
4. Eternal Ideals & Optimism: a sense that if it were up to you, the world around us could be and would be this way. 
5. Nightmares: picturing all of the bad things that could happen to us, or envisions the reasons not to pursue goals because of things that might go wrong
6. Fantasies: legitimately impossible ideas that we can not even create a strategy, or plan for.
   
   So, your dreams should not be categorized as living vicariously, career accomplishments, material attainment, eternal ideas & optimism, nightmares, or fantasies.

What Does Count As A Dream?

Now that we know what IS NOT a dream, let’s take a look at what is.

We want to include as many markers as possible when it comes to determining if our thoughts would qualify as dreams.

When deciding if an idea, big, or small qualifies as a dream in the sense that we are speaking, we can put it through the following Dream Filter.

7 Dream Filter Questions.

We should be able to check all of the boxes on these seven questions.

1. Is it meaningful?
   You should be willing to embrace this dream regardless of what others think, regardless of results and you should be the person most excited to achieve it in the world.
2. Is it energizing?
   You should be pursuing dreams that you think about often, that bring you vitality and joy for the sake of pursuing and working on them.
3. Is it generous?
   Others should be benefiting at least as much, or more than you through achieving this dream.
4. Is it long-lasting?
   You should not give up because of one or two obstacles if you still want to achieve the dream. You should be improving your legacy and having an impact beyond the act of simply doing it. 
5. Is it somewhat possible?
   The main goals of my dream are not pie in the sky, wild pipedreams, but are actually possible. Even though they may seem impossible, you should genuinely envision them happening. 
6. Is it somewhat in your control?
   Not the results, but some of the factors in the process toward the results must be in your immediate control now.
7. Does it require sacrifice?
   In the world of dreaming, we must give up things, in order to get things worthwhile. You should have to ensure this is a priority, which means removing other things to achieve it.

Things Get Serious Once You Have A Dream Worth Pursuing

Hopefully, you are able to come up with one, or more dreams that pass this 7 question filter. If not, as I said at the top, feel free to check out previous episodes of the podcast, especially Episode 72 “3 Fun Questions to help you choose your big goal in life” where I help you craft your one thing around your strengths, interests and who you want to be.

If you are able to answer yes to the items on this checklist when you filter your dream, then congrats, you are well on your way! 

But a quick warning, this is where the excuses stop. Things can get mentally challenging from this point on because you can’t pretend like you don’t know your ambitions anymore.

When we start being able to brainstorm dreams and we find some worth pursuing we are naturally left with the question, what’s next?

In the next couple lessons, we will look at the various sizes of dreams, and look at factors that can help us predict how likely it is that we will succeed, crafting effective goals and learning a tool from Tim Ferris called “Dreamlining.” 

But for today, the first thing to do is make sure you know at least one dream that passes this filter.

Thanks for reading. Your pal,
Justin @JustTries 

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