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No matter what my age, I can still make
my dreams come true. It doesn’t matter if I am nine or ninety-nine, the
dream factory is always open and ready for business. I can pick out a
shiny new dream and start working on it.
No matter how many false starts I made in the past, I can still make my
dreams come true. Each start is the beginning of a new life. The false
starts of the past don’t erase my future. I would rather have a
thousand false starts than do nothing at all.
No matter how many opportunities I missed in the past, I can still make
my dreams come true. As soon as I say yes to life, the door of
opportunity still swings open.
No matter how many times I failed in the past, I can still make my
dreams come true. Past failures are not my prison. Instead, they are
the launching pad for my future. Each failure eliminates a strategy
that didn’t work. I focus on my dreams and forget my failures. My
future can be anything I want as long as I am willing to do whatever it
takes. No matter what happened in the past, I can still make my dreams
come true.
Copyright © 2013
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Dreams are dangerous things. Sometimes they take
over your life.I spent the
past thirty years sailing on the ocean of my dreams. For most of those
years, my feet were on dry land, but in my mind, I was sailing the seven
seas. I've sailed around the world dozens of times in my mind with
Joshua Slocum, Harry Pidgeon, and Bernard Moitessier at my side. I've
survived the savage seas of the high southern latitudes with the crew
of Tzu Hang as they were pitchpoled in the waters off Cape Horn. I've
been with the Pardeys and the Hiscocks as they sailed on their voyages
of discovery. I've deployed parachute sea anchors and trailed drogues
hundreds of times in the storms of my mind. I've dropped my anchor in
Paradise and snorkeled in enchanted atolls. I've even escaped from
pirates - buccaneers of the mind who tried to steal my dreams.
In my mind, I practiced sailing
around the world for more than twenty years before I actually cast off
my dock lines and set sail on my eleven year circumnavigation.
So how did it feel to make my dreams come true?
First, I would have to admit it was a bit scary to drop the dock lines
and set sail. This was a voyage of exploration into our unknowns, and
unknowns were in abundance. During the trip around the world, we often
ran out of wind, sometimes we ran low on diesel fuel, but we never ran
out of unknowns.
I didn't know how much the trip
was going to cost. Working for eleven years in Saudi Arabia paid for
my boat and supplied me with enough freedom chips to weather any
financial storms that came our way. I knew that the trip was going to
cost a lot of money, especially with college coming up for my kids.
Some days, I wondered if I could really afford to make the trip, but
on most days, I KNEW THAT I COULDN'T AFFORD TO NOT MAKE THE TRIP. The currency of my youth was in short supply, and having an awesome
adventure with my family was worth any price. And how do you count the
richness of your life anyway? Dreams or dollars? Which will it be.
I'll take my dreams any day.
Second, I had never made an ocean
passage before I started the voyage. I had only sailed my catamaran six
times before I started out on the trip. I was unproven and my yacht was
unproven.
The biggest things I had going for me were that I had a positive
attitude, a positive family, and I had already sailed around the world
dozens of time in my mind. I quickly learned that sailing a catamaran
isn't rocket science, and if we can do it, anyone can. A conservative
amount of sail and a positive attitude will take a sailboat just about
anywhere you want to go.
Third, in my mind, I was afraid of
pirates, tsunamis, and hurricanes. As it turned out, we never met a
pirate, we survived one global tsunami in Thailand totally unscathed,
and there was nary a hurricane that threatened our eleven year voyage.
The worst thing that happened on the entire circumnavigation was a car
accident in New Zealand that broke two legs, fractured five ribs, and
punctured one lung. It took me out of commission for nearly a year, but
it didn't stop the voyage of Exit Only. After the fractures healed and
I learned to walk again, we set sail for Fiji and continued sailing for
nine more years before we completed our trip around the world.
Dreams do come true, and making
them happen is within the capability of ordinary folks who have
extraordinary dreams. A positive attitude and unstoppable persistence
allows anyone to sail on the ocean of their dreams. All they have to do
is do it. All you can do, is all you can do, but all you can do is
enough.
It's a lot of work to live your
dreams, but that doesn't matter, because when you live your dreams, your
life is worth living. Your life keeps getting better, and before long
you realize that there is no limit to how good your life can become.
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