BY GUEST EDITOR CAROLINE DONAHUE

http://www.remabulouscoaching.com/

When setting goals and brainstorming dreams, I am always amazed how easy it is for people to sell themselves short. Even when coming up with a list of our wildest dreams that he hope to achieve, many of us (myself included, to be honest) sometimes catch ourselves saying, “Oh, my. I could never imagine having THAT!) What happens to us when we constrict ourselves when we dream? Our reality is even smaller. The secret to success is to make your dreams as big as you can possibly make them and then think about HOW you can achieve them.

Many of us get stuck on why: Why do I deserve that? Why would that work? Why would anyone pay me the amount I am asking for, or hire me for that job? For your purposes, why doesn’t matter. All that matters is how.

Your job is to figure out how you can be true to yourself and your values and acheieve the dreams and life that will make you happy. Break things down into short goals and benchmarks and then ask yourself about the next step, “How can I get there?” and follow along that path.

I guarantee that when you reach the end, you won’t care a bit about why it worked.

Here’s the soccer net tip I promised above: If you imagine kicking the ball just to the back of the next, you’re probably not going to get the ball in. How can you get a ball into a net? Kick it in there as if you want it to burst out the back and reach the sky in the image.

Another example I love is that of people who can break boards of bricks in karate. Check out Kevin Taylor, the world record holder, who broke 584 bricks in 57.5 seconds!You can bet he’s not asking why he’s able to do it as he sets this record- he’s only thinking how he can break the next set. How do people break bricks with their hands? Here is a little video on how to do it. The most significant point he shares in the video is this: don’t plan top your hand at the surface of the brick; it won’t break. You must aim your hand past the break.

This is the same for achieving your goals and dreams as well: if you aim only to achieve what you think is possible, your beliefs and limits will stop you. You must let yourself dream larger than the goal you are hoping to accomplish. For example, if you’d like to start a little video show on your site, seeing this as part of a larger dream to have a TV show is a way to aim your hand past that brick and achieve your goal. Just like the soccer goal- plan on kicking it through the net and you are more likely to score. Would Obama have achieved election in the Senate if he wasn’t dreaming of bigger goals? It’s a long way up that flag pole pictured here, but it’s not that far by comparison if you’re looking beyond it to the clouds. Success is often more about your perspective about what’s possible than it is about the force of your efforts. So, think about where you stop your hand when you plan to break your own bricks. At the surface of the brick where you’ll hurt your hand, or on the other side where you will have achieved your goal? How can changing this perspective help you leap ahead?