I have many people who reach out for help in their lives tell me that they don’t think that they can ever have what they wish for in their lives. They seem to have already given up on their dreams before they have ever begun to pursue them. Whether it is something as simple as finding love, of getting out of the rut of trading an hour of their life for an hour of pay, or even some noble aspiration of doing something that will help others less fortunate than themselves. They just don’t see it happening.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but the greatest of these reasons is their lack of understanding of the power of faith. I am here to tell you that if you have dreamed it, contemplated it, or imagined it, and it is something that produces good in the world for someone besides just you, WHATEVER IT IS, IT IS POSSIBLE!
The greatest failure in life when you have something that you want or aspire to do is the failure to start working towards seeing it happen in your life. If you are someone that has been holding back and not realizing your dreams in life, change your circumstances today and begin to start working at it. If you do, you will be closer to achieving it than if you didn’t try at all. Just remember that your success or the success of any worthwhile endeavor is not an event, but a journey.
Five Steps for Increasing Your Faith
1) Determine what you want to do with your life and the goals you have for yourself. I have tons of things that I want to do in my life. All of them are my hopes. I love dreaming. I dream all of the time. Having an overactive mind as I do, my dreams are all over the place about things that I would like to do, want to do, or wish I could do. As I continue hoping for things, I begin dreaming about them (day and night). As this happens, a vision for each of them is eventually birthed (being able to see the big picture of how it might happen).
2) Prioritize your hopes, dreams, and visions (“goals”). The key to determining what you want to do with your life however, is much different. You can do all sorts of things throughout your life, but you want to focus on the most important first, then build from there. An example of immediate goals would be keeping a roof over your head and keeping you fed. An example of a dream or other life goal that is not absolutely necessary for survival would be starting your own business instead of working for someone else or writing a book that will become a national best seller. Make a list of everything you wan tto do with your life, then prioritize them based upon most important/essential versus less important and nonessential.
3) Begin reading books that will build your faith. Read books and stories of people who have overcome great challenges and done amazing things with their lives. Gain an understanding of why they did it, what inspired them, and how they overcame their challenges to achieve the things they did that made them famous.
I highly recommend reading the Bible. It is chalked full of amazing stories throughout history of what God did through average unlikely to succeed people. In fact, Scripture tells us that we can build our faith. In Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome, he writes, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” (Romans 10:17).
The more you read of great stories of success, the more your faith will grow in believing that you can be successful in the things that you hope or dreams of doing with your life.
4) Take your list of things that you want to do, and start a notebook for your top hopes or dreams. If your dreams or hopes are big enough, I suggest a notebook for each one. Before the dreams, hopes, or visions I have get to a single notebook of their own, they start on the pages of a single leather bound blank-paged book that I call my “Dream Book”. This is where I write about things that I dream about or envision myself doing.
In addition to my Dream Book, I have several individual notebooks that are each dedicated to a single dream, hope or vision that I have been given. These are my Battle Manuals. They are my written blueprints and battle plans on how to achieve victory in my life over procrastination, fear of failure, and indecision. They give me the upper hand on the demons of my life that often chase after me in my pursuit of the dreams, hopes, and visions I have for the things I want to do in my life.
5) Begin to talk about your hopes, dreams, and visions with others whom you trust and respect. The more you talk about the things that are in your heart that you want to do, the more real and the more clear they will become to you. The more clear they become, the more possible they will become in being accomplished. As you share your hopes, dreams and visions with others, you will find that many people you share with will get excited about what you are doing or hope to do. They will want to help you. If your hope, dream, or vision is big enough and can help others enough, they will find it worth their time in helping you, because they will see the potential in what you are doing.
6) Begin taking small incremental steps towards your goals on a daily basis. Once you have taken the time to make a list of steps that you need to take to see your goals realized, you can begin working towards your goals little by little. While having a timetable for your goals is a motivation to act upon your goals, be most concerned about simply taking the first step each day in accomplishing at least a small task that moves you closer to accomplishing the things you need to do in order to achieve your goals.
An Example of Small Incremental Steps.
Let’s say that you have a goal of wanting to start a website where you can encourage and motivate others. You want to share your life with others and the lessons you have learned along the way. At the same time, you don’t think that you have what it takes to do something like this.
The first step that you may want to take is to start a daily journal about the day to day activities of your life, the challenges you face, and how you overcame them. Nothing more. Just a simple daily journal – whether in a notebook or in a word processor on your computer. If you don’t have a word processor, simply email your daily writing to yourself and put a short title in the subject line about what you wrote about. In a few months time you will have 60 or so entries about your life and your victories in life. These daily journal posts will become the basic content for your website. With a little editing, adding a few photos, and coming up with a good title for each, you have sixty articles for your website that will be able to bless a lot of people.
It’s time to act – NOW!
If you have been encouraged by this article, consider acting on it. Take a moment and write down some of your hopes, dreams, or visions that you have had in your life that you have not yet acted upon. See where this list takes you in recognizing the potential you have to make a positive and lasting difference in the lives of others through the things that you hope and aspire to do. Watch what will happen in your life as you begin to act upon your goals as your faith grows from taking action. Your life will never be the same!