Achieving Dreams by Yvette Gavin

Have you ever wondered why some people achieve their dreams and others don’t?  Since leaving my corporate job in 2016 and launching my corporate training, coaching, and speaking practice, I’ve been repeatedly asked this question— how did you do it?  The question is often followed up with a self-confession that sounds similar to this, “I want to pursue my dreams, but ______________.”  The blank can be filled in with a 1001 excuses but at the end of the day, they all are excuses.  What I know for sure is that there is no secret sauce in realizing a long-term dream.  Dreams require intentionality.  Here’s how I got started:

Commitment to Grow – Too often people underestimate the unimportance of nearly everything in their lives. I decided to stop and reflect on why I wasn’t where I wanted to be in life. In doing so, I realized how I had allowed negative and unfair situations and people to cripple my view of myself.   Taking full responsibility for this unproductive state of mind, I made a decision to intentionally grow.  I decided to no longer look at disappointing situations as setbacks but as education. I looked for the life lessons in my everyday life and begin to build from the learnings. 

Create the Plan – I am not a neuroscientist, but I know there is something powerful that happens when we put intentions on paper.  There’s a lot of buzz around whether to set goals or not and the overall effectiveness of goalsetting.  For me, writing goals on paper, defining measurements, and setting timelines for those goals have worked extremely well.   But, I don’t just write lofty, pie-in-the-sky goals.  I aligned short term and long term goals to my overall vision.  For example, before setting goals to become a life coach, I researched the field first and learned what was needed to move into the coaching field (education, certifications, cost, etc.) and then mapped out a two-year plan.  

Continuous Movement – The perfection gap or the fear of making a mistake had been the number one thing to cause me to stop pursuing my dream. For sure friends, family, and foes were quick to point out my mistakes, or so it appeared to me. I know for sure, that I will make mistakes and everything I do will not be perfect all the time.  Where I will always strive for excellence and put my best effort forward, I no longer look at mistakes as failures.  They are life lessons and I see them as a sign that I am moving in the right direction.  Author and professor Warren Bennis said, “A mistake is simply another way of doing things.”  If you wait for perfection before moving forward, you may never move.  The key here is to keep moving forward by growing and getting better even in the face of imperfection.  

What about you, are you moving towards your dream?  For support on how to move forward with realizing your dreams, contact me at www.yvettegavin.com. 

Twitter: @YvetteGavin