Anti-age your dreams

I love to hear when kids talk about their aspirations, dreams and fantasies which they so clearly articulate without the possibility  that it cannot be done, especially when they brag between themselves trying to out-dream each other. They have this un-blinkered view of life without a grain of doubt to the possibilities that exist before being toned down, conditioned and acclimatized to 'life' by those who have gone before. I will have a big plane, one will say. I will have a space ship big enough to carry a million people to the moon, another responds. Well, I will be a queen and you will all bow and serve me yet another will say, to which an interjection will come from another aspiring to be the superhero the queen calls upon to save the world. With time come blinkers of all sorts. Downfalls and failures, bad relationships, negative talk, reality-checks and the so called real world happens. The dreams start falling by the way side one by one and become just that, dreams, if at all they linger. The bucket that was once full of possibility, becomes lighter and lighter with continuous offloading to pessimists, sneering at those dreams and watering them down to a drench leaving one feeling like they came out of a storm. The excitement slowly wanes, with it the dreams and visions fade away leaving only disillusionment.

Is it possible?
Well it is not all doom and gloom, as sometimes this is only a cycle where one needs to find themselves again and discover who they are what they can do and what they want to achieve in life. Taking back control of one's vision, dreams, and aspirations can occur at any point in life once a resolution has been made. How does one do this? Well there are several ways to resuscitate dreams but I will list five.

• First up is to dream in the first place. Dreams can come true, so the cliché goes, but how can a dream come true if it has not been dreamt in the first place. Have an environment of nurturing dreams, an imagination, a hunger a thirst to start something. Different people have different ways of stimulating their imagination, creativity and dreams and one must find this environment and nurture it. For some it is finding peace and quiet coupled with meditation, yet for some it is taking long walks and drives, while others still it is travel distant or new places where they can unclutter their minds. Find your bed of dreams and take a nap.

• Who is in the front row of your show? Keep people who dwell on your strengths and not your weaknesses and help you stimulate your dreams close. Those who highlight what you do better than them and catapult you to pursuing something big for yourself. Dreams are killed by scoffers and jeerers, sneerers, gibers and mockers (could be a few new English words there), who have nothing positive to say about your dream.

• Are you walking or are you a caged bird that stands on the graveyard of dreams? You need to take a step towards your desired dream. It is said a dream is just a dream until one wakes up and pursues it. So you need to make that dream a reality through steps aimed at realizing the dream. It may be renting office space for a business, writing the first paragraph of a book, putting out an advert for services you want to render. Whatever it is, take that first step of faith towards it.

• Review and constantly align your progress to your target to ensure that you are on track, making adjustments if necessary for the dream to remain realistic, achievable and feasible.

• The last point is to always keep the baby in you alive, that childlike perspective and outlook to nurture your dreams. A child never stops dreaming and never stops believing in possibilities so never grow up on your dreams.

Look in the horizon and resuscitate those dreams that died within you and go for that dream!