How to Reach Your Dreams through Willpower

I think I finally understand this quote by Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate – our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

When I discovered my guest post on Mike King’s blog, Learnthis.ca, received over 1,000 hits on StumbleUpon on the day of its publication, I was ecstatic. I felt the usual celebratory emotions that come with reaching any milestone: happiness, excitement, and surprise, to name a few.

But what I couldn’t quite understand was this other emotion I could feel coming from within me. It was like there was a fear inside me.

It seemed to say, “Was this power really inside me all this time?”

The short answer: yes

We all have the power to make our dreams real. And I mean ANY dreams real. Think about it. If you truly believe you will fail, then you have no doubt that you will. Every day of your life will be spent succumbing to the detrimental idea of reality you have created for yourself.

Soon, every instance of temporary failure you encounter will only solidify the dream you’ve made in your mind and will eventually come through in your actions.

Now, think about when you truly believe you will succeed. Remember that similarly, if you believe it, you will be more likely to follow the actions leading to your inevitable success, thus resulting in making your success real.

Change the way you perceive reality

Your reality is not set in stone. Although everyone will try and tell you how life will end up for you if you pursue your own dreams, you can rest assured that they are not 100% sure themselves.

They cannot tell you how your reality will end up because all they really know is their own reality.

When you confront other people’s “regular reality” with your idea of a remarkable one, they will criticize it because they do not understand it. People, in general, are naturally following skeptics. In other words, they are skeptical of what other people think is skeptical, rarely drawing from their own observations.

You can end this right now

Are you ready to bring about your own reality? For those of you who wish to continue on the conventional path, thank you. You are the ones that challenge the rest of us to make our dreams real.

And with these tips, you most certainly will:

Speak of your goals only once

This is a bit of an odd technique to start with, but trust me, it works. I got this idea from Derek Sivers, who says that announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them. That’s why we constantly hear of people who talk constantly of change and achieving their dreams, but ultimately fail at actually carry them out.

I suggest speaking of your intentions only once, just so people around you know your intentions, and then stop talking about them completely. Believe it or not, keeping your mouth shut will increase the actions you take towards your goals.

Instead of telling them, SHOW them.

Do not be afraid of your willpower

Our willpower is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Our will is what made man go to the moon. Will is what’s going to create the cure for cancer. Will is what made everything we have at our fingertips possible.

Humankind as a whole isn’t afraid of their willpower: don’t be afraid of yours. Realize that the power to get what you want is entirely within your control. You and you alone, are the master of your domain.

Realize that only willpower is not enough

Think of the way we use power in life. Electricity is utterly useless to us when if we let it remain in the atmosphere, but if we harness it, many things become possible. All we have to do is use electricity to power a microwave and we can reheat into our food.

This is the same way you should be thinking about willpower. Will unharnessed is energy put to waste. Use this fuel to power your actions and mover ever closer to the actualization of your dreams.

Do not stop short of the finish line

A common problem we have is stopping short right before we actually get to the end. This tends to happen when we become too frustrated to keep going, giving up before we’ve reached our true potential. I know that you sometimes feel that you’re trying crack a rock with a slipper when pursuing your dreams, but you have to understand something:

Everything worth anything takes effort. And this effort must be present all the way until the end.

With willpower, the wind is at your back

The potential that lies inside each of us is more powerful than many of us will ever know. Most of the world will still stand together as skeptics, forever questioning their will.

But in the end, the few who question their very skepticism are the ones who will be able to decide their own destiny.

About the author: John Anyasor is the creator of HiLife2B. There he gives advice on personal development, inspiration, and motivation. A second year undergrad, he seeks to one day break the cycle of entering the dreaded 9-5 by achieving the life he wants and helping others at the same time. Follow him on Twitter.

25 Things To Do in Your Life

What would you recommend to a complete alien to do on Earth, between his birth and his death? Suppose you’re going to meet a tiny little green man, who will naively ask you: “Hey, mate, what’s the thing with this Earth?”. What are the 25 things that would create for him an unforgettable, yet totally customized (as in specific to you, and only you) experience?

I know you’re used to much bigger lists on my blog, but this one is different. Its’ not a blogging challenge, nor a method to stretch my writing skills. It’s just an honest transcription of the answers to the question: “what do you want to do in your life?”. It may not be spectacular at all, but it is for real. It may not be complete, but you are here to give me more hints. It may not be the only list of things to do in your life on the Internet, but it’s mine. And you can grow your own list from it too.

Here’s what I’d say it’s worth doing between birth and death to a complete alien who just arrived here on Earth:

1. Fall in Love

As often as you can. Experience the abandon of yourself in front of something bigger than you and the object of your love altogether. Don’t actively look for it, but merely be prepared to receive it when it finds you.

2. Climb a Mountain

Everest will be fine. Of course, if you can’t do Everest, any mountain will do. Did it a few times and every time I descended I left a small part of me on that desert plateau. Now all I want is to get back again and rejoin it.

3. Make a Million Dollars

And spend it all. Did both and felt good. For me, this was the best way to get rid of the “money as a number” obsession. After you did this once, things will look very different. You’ll never be afraid of having and spending money.

4. Go Round the World by Plane

Did that too. Bucharest – Rome – Las Vegas – Los Angeles – Auckland – Bangkok – Vienna – Bucharest. Spent more than 45 hours in planes in less than 2 weeks but although I was tired as hell, it felt incredibly rewarding. The world is really small.

5. Fish with Your Bare Hands

Did this when I was a child, in a village in the middle of Romania. My parents used to leave me for the summer at my grand parents house, which was near a creek, 20 cm deep at most. We used to block one of the creek’s ways with sand, and while the other one was slowly drying we were picking small fish with our bare hands.

6. Learn a Foreign Language

Or maybe two or three. Try to depict the world for a few weeks using the new words you learned. In a magical way the world will be enriched just because you describe it in a different way. It’s like you re-create it every time you talk about it using different words in a different language.

7. Sail across the Ocean

Didn’t do it. Yet. But I’d love to be on a boat sailing across the Oceans. Waking up each day only to see the infinite water stretching in front of my eyes. Experiencing the bare confrontation with something hugely more powerful than me, yet able to become my ally.

8. Start Your Own Business

Like an outlet for doing more of what you want and creating more of what you love. I did it out of curiosity 10 years ago and still enjoying the benefits. It’s not only about being your own boss (although it feels incredibly good ) but about taking more responsibility.

9. Have Kids

And raise them. It’s not what you can teach them, but mostly what you can learn from your kids. It seems that somehow along the way we lose the ability to enjoy life the way we used to. Kids are here to remind us that we’re here to enjoy life. Together.

10. Build a House

If it’s yours, even better. Building a house is a powerful maturity test. It’s far more difficult than it seems and it really changes some of your internal values. Didn’t do that yet, only witnessing it at some of my friends, but definitely something I want to do in this lifetime.

11. Take a Year Off from Work

I think they call this sabbatical. I did this after I sold my business, last year. Well, it wasn’t technically a year without work at all, because I started and maintained this blog. But since I don’t really call this work, I think it will do. Your entire life perspective shifts after one year off the hook.

12. Get Married

And the moment you don’t like it anymore, get a divorce. The way humankind is working nowadays, marriage is still a key type of relationship. Even if you crave for a much more open type of interaction, you can’t really get all its benefits until you experience all the joys and sorrows of marriage.

13. Write a Book

Any type of book. Whatever you feel the need to share. May be an ebook if you don’t have the time or resources to go for a printed one, but I think everybody should write a book in his lifetime. If only to let other people that he really lived and how.

14. Run a Marathon

Didn’t do this yet, but I crave for it. I don’t know why, but I feel like this is an important body milestone. Pushing the limits over what you think you can do, knowing that you did it.

15. Share a Dream with Somebody

Maybe it’s a house you want to build with your partner. Or traveling the world together. Whatever it is, if it’s a shared dream is really worth striving for it, even if – or especially if – it’s for your entire lifetime. Shared dreams are most of the time at the roots of our physical reality.

16. Completely Change Your Career

At least once. I did it twice so far, going from being a radio anchor to being an online entrepreneur and then a full time blogger. Don’t spend your precious time in the same boring job until you die, it’s not worth it. Yes, there is risk involved. Which is great!

17. Help a Completely Unknown Person

Have you ever thought how it is to go to someone you never met and help him? Sometimes without even letting him know? This is what I call an anonymous random act of kindness and I’ve done it more than once. Mostly for how it made me feel, I admit.

18. Don’t Talk for a Week

I didn’t do this but I want to do it. We’ve been trained to talk so much that we can’t rejoice silence anymore. Somehow, we replaced the unbiased, direct experience of life with second hand experiences through words. A week of silence should at least make the speaking fun again after you finish it.

19. Attend a Funeral

When I first attended a funeral I was too little so I didn’t quite understand what was going on. Only after I grasped some of the concepts of what we generally call death, I was able to fully understand it. It’s a celebration, not a mourning. This is why Zorba dances at funerals.

20. Live in a Complete Foreign Country for at Least a Week

Did that when I spent 7 days in Japan, without knowing the language and almost without anybody around speaking English. After all the frustration was gone it proved to be an incredible experience. We can interact and live in so many ways without spoken language and beyond it.

21. Plant a Tree

Did it so many times when I was a kid and was spending my summers at my grandparents in the country side. Did it again when I moved into a new house a few years ago. It’s like making a two-ways gift: you allow a life form to exist while receiving all the benefits of its existence.

22. Write a Poem

It’s not about literature here, no need to inspire millions with your words (but if it happens to do that, even better). Just let them flow through your soul and speak your feelings. When I was in my last year of college I wrote several hundreds poems but never showed them to anyone.

23. Climb the Highest Point in Your City

I don’t know why, but I’m addicted to this one. Everywhere I travel I look for the highest point and go there: Paris, Auckland, Tokyo, Vienna, Prague, they all have a tower structure. It gives me a fantastic feeling of freedom and “everything is possible” when I look at the cities from above.

24. Lose a Battle

Let go of something really important for you. It might be a person you love, or a thing you’re hanging on. Just let it flow away and continue to live your life. It will help you understand that your existence is not confined within the boundaries of a single person or a single thing.

25. Swim with the Dolphins

Didn’t do it yet, but I’m obsessed with dolphins. There is an unspeakable feeling of being free and at the same time shared in another dimension in this image, that I can almost get the shivers only by thinking at it. I also think it would become some sort of addiction once I’ll get to it.

What are your 25 things? What would you absolutely, unreservedly and unconditionally would want to do in your lifetime?  Why? Share those dreams here, in the comments, or on your own blog. Just link back so I can discover you.

If you dream about something, let it out and dare do make it real.