Building a Hothouse for Your Dreams

Dreams are extremely fragile—especially in their early days. Dreams, like babies and seedlings, need to be nurtured and surrounded by support.

Here are a handful of ways to get your dreams off to a great start.

° Passion must be present. While a dream may be born in passion, it’s up to you to keep it alive. If you’re halfhearted and lukewarm about them, your dreams will never come true.

One way to keep passion high is to spend a few minutes every day visualizing the successful completion of your dream. How does it look, smell, taste, sound, feel? Allow that vision to keep pulling you forward.

° Take good care of the boss. It doesn’t matter how great a dream is if the dream keeper is too tired or too uninspired to bring it to life.

Sometimes the easiest things to do are also the easiest to overlook—like drinking plenty of water and avoiding toxic people. Dreamkeepers have an obligation to create the healthiest and most balanced life possible.

° Make your workspace a place that inspires you. Whether you work on a beach with your laptop or in an extra bedroom in your home, make it inspiring as well as efficient.

If you’re in your home burn incense, play classical music, have a tabletop fountain. Cover your wall with art or an inspiration board that features pictures of your dream. And if you’re sitting on a beach, pick one with a great view.

° Take responsibility for staying inspired. There are three ways to run a business: Inspired, Uninspired or With Occasional Flashes of Inspiration.

Identify the things that inspire you and expose yourself to them frequently. Whether it’s music, words from a favorite author or other entrepreneur, or some spot in nature, know where your Inspiration Well is located and go there often.

° Create your own Hall of Fame. Ask a successful actor or musician who inspired them and they’ll probably answer quickly. Ask a would-be entrepreneur the same question and you’re apt to be greeted by a shrug of the shoulders.

If you’re going to succeed, you need to be inspired by real people. Read biographies or interviews of successful people and pay attention to the philosophies that guide them.

° Be open to being inspired at all times. You never know where a great idea or solutions to a problem will come from.

Like Sir Richard Branson, carry a notebook with you at all times so you can jot down ideas as they occur.

If you spend a lot of time driving, you may want to carry a voice-activated recorder to capture your thought. Do not, however, text them to yourself while driving.

° Notice what catches your attention. What makes you happy? What causes an emotional response? These are clues. Apathy is not a success tool.

Take time to pay attention to advertising and marketing that you like—and that you loath. Consider how you can bring the qualities you respond to into your business.

° Collect entrepreneurial friends. There’s almost nothing more rewarding than spending time in the presence of kindred spirits who can add their own creative ideas and encouragement to what you’re doing.

Cultivating such friendships will be one of the best investments you can make. Seminars and coffee shops are great places to scout for new friends.

° Change the scenery. There’s nothing that dulls the creative spirit more quickly than daily routine.

You can counteract the dulling effect of that by taking a field trip or creative excursion at least once a week. Take your laptop to a park, visit a museum or walk in a Japanese garden.

Challenge yourself to come up with new backdrops that feed your soul.

Change of Scenery

At the end of July, my high school class had a milestone reunion. I had considered attending, but changed my mind when my move popped up.

Afterwards I received a mailing which listed the names and addresses of my former classmates. What struck me immediately was how many of the people were living in the same place they’d been residing at the last reunion—and the ones before that.

While staying put in one place is something I never wanted to do, I admit that I felt a bit envious, but I blame that on being in the midst of the epic task of organizing a physical move.

Even as a kid, I couldn’t imagine settling for a world no bigger than the county where I grew up. I knew there was a big wide world where people talked, lived and looked differently and I wanted to explore.

For many years, I only knew about faraway places through reading about them. It wasn’t until I discovered self-employment that I figured out a way to see things up close and personal for myself.

When I began traveling regularly and meeting other would-be entrepreneurs, I realized  that the same curiosity that urges us to see the world is very much like the curiosity that urges us to start a business.

In fact the very unpredictability of self-employment holds special charms for the joyfully jobless. Where will I go today? What next project fascinates me? Where will I meet kindred spirits?

Unanswered questions, not routine, colors our days.

None of these things are likely to show up for us, however, unless we engage. Instigate. Explore. Get out and about.

Years ago, I read an article in Writers Digest which warned writers about the danger of hiding away in our offices. In order to be a good writer, the author suggested, we must get out and observe. Listen to other people’s stories, be inspired by a change of scenery.

Yesterday, I put the padlock on the POD sitting in my driveway holding all my household goods, got in the car and drove to my new hometown in southern California. As I set out, I decided to spend the five hour drive focusing on gratitude.

As I headed west, something else happened that I hadn’t anticipated. Suddenly, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I wanted my next year to include. Museums and mobility are emerging themes.

Even bigger is a crusade I intend to launch. When the idea hit, it was so obvious that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t taken it up sooner. You’ll be hearing more about that soon. In fact, there will be an official announcement at the Joyfully Jobless Jamboree.

“The world is like a book,” said St. Augustine all those years ago, “and he who stays home reads only one page.”

Still true.