When my dreams are born, they are weak
and vulnerable, and they easily die from neglect. Dreams can only
survive in the intensive care unit of my mind. I must monitor and feed
them to keep them alive. If I keep them alive, they will keep me
alive. If I neglect them, they will die, and I will forget they ever
existed.
I love working on my dreams. There aren’t enough hours in a day for me
to work on them. When I get up in the morning, my mind is full of
anticipation. Today I will open new doors of opportunity. When I lay
my head on my pillow at night, I wish I had a few more hours to work on
my purpose and plan.
There is only one time I should quit. When what I am doing obviously
isn’t working, it’s time to try a new strategy. Managing failure is
tricky. I may be doing the right thing, but my timing is off. I may be
doing the wrong thing, but my timing is right. If I am doing the wrong
thing, or if my timing is off, I should stop what I am doing and try
something new. Failure is a signal to modify my timing or strategy.
Eventually, I will make the proper adjustments, and my dreams will come
true. I will never quit working on my dreams.
Too many people have their life on hold waiting for the perfect place
and time to work on their dreams. Unfortunately, if you don't work on
your dreams every day, they will never happen. You will simply run out
of time.
There is no perfect place and time to work on your dreams. When I lived
in Arabia hundreds of miles from the sea, common sense said it was a bad
time and place to work on my sailing trip around the world. On the
other hand, uncommon sense said it was an excellent time to study
celestial navigation. I could learn star, sun, moon and noon sights,
and even practice dead reckoning while exploring my desert realm. After
all, if I could navigate in the desert, then navigating on the ocean
would be a breeze. Furthermore, Arabia gave me an opportunity to save
up Freedom Chips to finance my adventures.
In my short lifetime, I have visited. lived in, and worked in over
thirty countries around the world, and every one of those places were
perfect for working on my dreams.
After living for nearly six decades, I can unequivocally state that
every time is a good time to work on my dreams. It doesn't matter what
my age or stage in life, I can live as if my dreams are possible and
work each day to make them happen.
Whatever your age, and wherever you are, you should be working on your
dreams. Any place is the right place and any time is the right time to
make your dreams come true.
THE NEXT STEP
Although I have 20/20 hindsight,
when I look into the
future, I can't see farther than the next step. God made the world
work that way and He did it for a good reason.
Our future is in our hands, and we can make it into anything we want.
If we knew what was going to happen ahead of time, our life would become
a rerun. Foreknowledge would blunt the thrill of victory and magnify
the agony of defeat.
After I arrived in New Zealand on my catamaran, I purchased a van that I
used to tour the country. While touring on the north island, I rolled
the van and nearly died in the accident. I broke two legs, five ribs,
one scapula, punctured one lung, and ended up in the hospital for two
months.
Before this accident I had just spent six months sailing across the
Pacific Ocean with my family. We explored the marvels of the Galapagos
Islands and discovered the glories of Polynesian paradise. Samoa,
Tonga, and Fiji revealed their wonders as our catamaran sailed west. By
the time our anchor was down in New Zealand, we had sailed on the ocean
of our dreams, and life was good.
If I had know ahead of time about the car accident, the entire trip
across the Pacific would have been a countdown to disaster. Instead of
reveling in our cruising dreams, I would have been focusing on future
pain.
God in his mercy gives us enough strength to live our dreams each day,
but He doesn't load the future into our backpack and force us to carry
that burden. Instead, He parcels out our life one day at a time and
gives us the courage to take the next step.
