A simple approach

Have you ever considered that actualising your dreams is actually a skill that you can learn? Apparently, very few people know how to do it. We’ll discuss a very simple approach here.

Unfortunately, most people are waiting for the “pain-teacher” to arrive in their lives, in order to start contemplating about changing their behaviour which will lead to a more desirable life-experience.

Recognise the ‘pain teacher’

•  You hit brick walls within yourself and in your relationships

•  You are not getting the desired results

•  The same challenges reoccur

•  You have a feeling of angst that leads to fear, resentment, and often blaming others

•  Your passion/focus/love for life decreases

•  You experience the “flatland-state” where nothing is novel, exciting or pleasant; a sense of “nothing-is-moving”

Why wait for pain?

Do you need to wait for the “pain-teacher” to deplete your life-force? Pain is a wonderful “awareness-tool”, and its role in our lives is to help us understand where we are out of balance and correct our choices. Nevertheless, we can practice the following dream-building method to prevent any unnecessary pain-bells (e.g. ill health, disease, money problems, relationship challenges, poor results, feeling stuck etc.)

Easy as ABC

The ABC of dream-building is better viewed in reverse:

•  C for clarity

•  B for belief

•  A for action

CLARITY: if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

Without a clear direction and purpose, you don’t have a compass in life to help you focus your energy, efforts and life-force, and make the choices necessary to get you where you want to be. In his Universal Principles, Arnold M. Patent says “You must conceive of life in ideal terms before you can live it that way.” Being clear about what you want to experience in life is essential.

Have a dream

Having a clearly defined “overarching” dream gives you a sense of direction and the dream functions as your ‘North star’. Otherwise, you are missing the co-ordinance system that enables you to establish the core-values in life in order to know when to say “yes” and when to say “no”.

Define it

So, define what you want. Some trigger questions to get you started:

•  DREAM! What it is that you wished you could do if you had no limitations (be they time, money, skills etc.)?

•  What makes you feel good?

•  What are you passionate about?

•  What gives you a sense of purpose?

•  Where in the world do you want to live?

•  What kind of people do you want to have in your life?

•  How much money do you want to earn?

•  What working conditions do you want to have?

BELIEF: break your conditioning

What you choose to believe and do is crucial. So many people suffer from their “conditioned beliefs” (limiting beliefs), never managing to break through. As Martin Morrison has beautifully put it in his article “Mindfulness Reveals a World of Possibilities”, you create your reality. Nothing is real up until you choose.

Telling disempowering stories to yourself about who you are, what you can do, how the world works etc. to match your manufactured expectations can only bring forth these negative expectations. You get what you expect. Viewing the world as a threatening/harsh place is a choice. Viewing the world as an empowering place to share your love is also a choice.

Perceiving yourself as incapable of certain behaviour is a choice; perceiving yourself as a living reality that has the responsibility to act in congruence with what you want is also a choice. When you choose you create reality; what you choose is real. So, take responsibility of what you create moment to moment.

ACTION: build confidence by “doing”

When you have clarity and belief, you are naturally motivated to behave & act according to your stated dream. I find that many people are so detached from the practice of “dream-building” that they need to build the confidence of creating their reality. This confidence can be built through taking action; consistent action.

A virtuous circle

The more you take action, the more results you see, the more you’re reinforcing your belief and the more you create what you want – a ‘virtuous circle’. It is imperative though that you know what you want to create; clarity is the prerequisite for action. Even you might not yet believe 100% so have faith in yourself and do what you have to do.

Balanced goal setting

I have met many ambitious and highly-confident people in my life who are an embodiment of the ABC of “dream-building”. What I often witness in them though is a compromised living philosophy.

The 4 doctors

In my personal & professional practice, I use the 4-step model of “The 4-Doctors”. As a C.H.E.K Institute Trained Professional, I found that you cannot break living processes down below this level (4 Doctors); or else you get a dangerous disablement of a living philosophy.

These 4-Doctors are internal teachers and define our core values which allow us to choose wisely in order to cultivate adequate life-force within us and manifest our desired life-experience. These 4-doctors are:

•  DR. HAPPINESS helps us know what are the things that must be held together for us to understand and feel happiness.

•  DR. QUIET lets us know how much sleep, self-time, introspection, relaxation and rest we need.

•  DR. MOVEMENT is related to the amount of movement (physical movement – EXERCISE, mental – THINKING, emotional – EMOTING) we need in our life in order to be healthy and act out our dream.

•  DR. DIET defines what food quality we need and what foods are compatible with our unique bio-chemistry in order to build a strong and healthy body-mind (remember: Mind is an embodied process)

The Chan School of Nunchaku extend a massive thank you to Stefanos Matrakoukas for this excellent article.

Stefanos is a Holistic Lifestyle Coach. He supports individuals to implement and manage the principles that build health, vitality and well-being through diet and lifestyle coaching, corrective exercise and functional training, and self-development mentoring. He is the founder of CAUSE BASED APPROACH; a brand that runs events, talks, seminars and workshops that educate on physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.