Dream On!
How many times have you been told you should have one purpose in life, which will give you meaning, as if all of life were meant to be one accomplishment? Or you should find one big passion to work on your entire life? Or one big audacious lifelong dream to work toward?
Your whole life?
And, if that’s not enough, how many times have you heard that once you achieve that one big audacious dream, you can finally relax, begin to enjoy your life, and be happy. As if the time you spent living your life along the way was just for the purpose of getting to that one big dream at the end of the rainbow.
But what do you do after that?
What if, instead of trying to create one big dream to drive you forward, you allow yourself to have a bunch of dreams along the way? One dream at one stage of your life, followed by the Nxt dream, and the Nxt, and the Nxt, and so on. Little dreams that take you from one place in your life to the Nxt. Why should you put all of your eggs into one dream basket when, instead, you could benefit from having a bunch of dreams, allowing you to learn as you go and evolve from one dream to the Nxt?
Nxt dreams are the visions you see for each step in the journey of your life. They’re ideas you believe are important enough to explore. Reflections of the life you aspire to have Nxt. Not at the end of your life, but just around the corner. They shouldn’t be so big and so out of reach that you can never hope to attain them. But at the very least, they should be something more, or different, than what you are doing now.
So what if you’ve had only one big audacious dream you’ve been working toward and you’ve spent your entire life totally focused on getting there? Am I telling you to stop it and find a new dream? Absolutely not! Keep going if you believe that one dream is going to be the rock star dream of your lifetime! But you don’t have to wait for that one dream to come true to find enjoyment or become happy in another. It doesn’t have to be your one measure of success and fulfillment in life. You can build smaller dreams on top of it—and all around it—essentially living a bunch of smaller dreams along the way until you get to the big-bang finish of your big audacious dream.
I know dreaming can feel a bit daunting. And it’s easy to believe you get only a finite number of dreams in your lifetime. I found myself feeling like I was tapped out in the dream department after I sold the company. Faced with such a major opportunity for change in my life, the only thing I could describe myself doing was “retiring,” even though I knew I wasn’t done.
But it was the message I kept receiving over and over again.
“You did great. You built a company and sold it. Now you can finally relax and begin to enjoy your life and be happy.” But I had been enjoying my life all along. I was exceedingly happy. I didn’t think I was close to being done. Yet, when the dream of finding a beautiful piece of property in the mountains kept presenting itself—albeit in the form of a joke at first—I had to give myself permission to have yet another dream, and ask myself, “Why shouldn’t it be my Nxt dream?”
The difference between what you might have been taught about having one big audacious dream your whole life and the process of finding your Nxt is that each stage of your life can have its own dream, and its own Nxt. As life evolves—and you gain new information, new experiences, and a lot more knowledge about yourself and the world you live in—you get to create your Nxt dream over and over and over again. Big dreams, small dreams—it doesn’t matter. You can continue to dream and make Nxts, again and again.
How to Know Which Dream to Follow?
Once you get the hang of dreaming, you might find that you start dreaming all the time. It can be addicting when you realize there are tons of possibilities to pursue. But not all dreams are worth exploring. It’s best to be picky and develop a level of rigor when deciding which Nxt dream you want to spend your time and energy moving toward.
Your Nxt dream should not be a frivolous idea that you throw out into the universe without any intention of participating in attaining it. The universe is a vast and magical place, but it does not make your dreams come true. You do.
Secondly, Nxt dreams must have some basis in reality, considering your skills, strengths, attitude, and desires. Seriously, don’t make your Nxt dream a fantasy composed of unrealistic things with no relationship to who you are or how you want to live. You may dream about becoming a neurosurgeon, but if you suck at science and math and have a deep aversion to blood, that would be an utterly foolish dream for you to spend your valuable time and energy pursuing. So dreaming about becoming a neurosurgeon would be a fantasy, not your Nxt.
Ideally, your Nxt dream will be an idea that inspires you to ask and answer a ton of questions—and gets your heart palpitating with excitement. You’ll feel like you can almost reach out and touch it. It might be something you began thinking about years ago but weren’t quite ready to reach for it (like my dream of living in the mountains with a gorgeous view). Or it can be something you recognize as the natural next step you should take to get you where you want to go. It doesn’t matter when your dream began; it matters that you recognize it is worthy of your time and energy to make that dream come true.
