In the post I Dreamed A Dream I talked about the importance of defining your dream before you even start to set your goals and action plans. In this post I show you how to create your very own dream chart.

Dreams v’s Goals

Dreams differ from goals in that your Dreams are your big goals. For example retire at 40, travel the world.  These are your dreams. How you get there are your smaller goals.

Obviously only you can decide what you want your Dreams to be, but here we look at how you can make them real.

How you can make them real is by using a technique called visualisation. This is where you ‘see’ your Dreams through pictures and words – it’s about making your dreams ‘real’ by grouping together pictures of the things that represent your dreams to you.

Let me demonstrate this for you. Say you want to buy a new car. Let’s say it’s a BMW. Suddenly, every car you see on the road is a BMW.   Funny thing is, you’d never noticed them before.

This is because you become more aware of your environment and aware of the things you want. The same applies to Dreams. Visualising your dream makes them more real.

How To Create Your Dream Chart

A Dream Chart is basically a collection of pictures that inspire you and make up your dream.  You can add  photographs, cut pictures from magazines or brochures or simply download and print them out from off the internet etc. 

Cut these pictures out and paste them onto a large sheet of paper or onto your notice board.

You want to position your dream chart somewhere where you’re going to see it often.

You don’t want to be putting it into a scrap book and putting it away on the book shelf to gather dust.

You need to keep your dreams alive.

Keep it very prominent. Whether that’s your on the wall of your office or behind your bathroom door, you need to make sure it’s somewhere you see this at you look at it often.

What to include in your dream chart

Only include pictures which represent your Dream. Take the picture at the top of this post. Where is it? What’s there? How much money will you need to get you there and fund your lifestyle? Select the pictures which most closely answer these questions for you.

Say you’re Dream is to own a Porsche 911 get together pictures of the exact model and colour that you want.

The closer your dream chart represents your dream the better.

Choose your options and interior, the accessories and options that you’d choose. The exact amount of money everything would cost.

You want it to be so real that you could walk into a Porsche dealer tomorrow and order the car without having to think about it.

You dream chart needs to be so real for you that you could describe it to a friend without having to look at the picture.

A Dream Chart Keeps You Motivated

Being an entrepreneur is hard and some days you’ll want to give up and go back to doing ‘a real job’. By taking a look at your Dream Chart it will remind you why you do what you do and give you the motivation to carry on.

 Further reading Are you going to achieve your goals?