Growing your dream, while working your job.

So many of us have a idealized image in our head of what chasing our dreams truly looks like, a fantasy of what life as a dreamer would be. this picture usually involves dramatically quitting our job, heading out into the world to pursue said dream and immediately being showered with money, adoration, and being on the top of our dream world. We look at people in our dream profession, be it music, art, or some aspect of the business world, see them thriving and think "hey that could be me". We see the accouterments of success, what ever that would be for our chosen dream, be it big house, fancy cars, time freedom, or anything that we think means success in that field. What isn't as visible is the hard work that went into achieving that dream.

We cheer on co-workers as they leave to pursue their dreams, we pat them on the back, we throw an office party for them and wish them the best, never daring to ask the question of "how"? When we envision dream building we thing that it must happen in exclusion of all other pursuits, that we must be focused entirely on building that dream. Jim Rohn in his famous talk on the "power of part time", talks about, in reference to network marketing, the power of building a business part time that out paces your full time income, the power of the story of that, and the ability to make that happen. While this talk is focused specifically on the network marketing industry, it applies quite aptly to our dream building as well. The ability to forge one's dream, part time, while still earning a full time income is a powerful thing.

When we through away the idea that we must focus entirely on our dream in order for it to succeed, myriad options become available. The pressure that our dream "must succeed in a finite time frame, because as you well know, the day that you leave a job is not the day that the electric company stops caring if you pay your bill, or the day that the grocery store starts gifting you with free meals. If we truly desire to pursue a dream full time we're not only pursuing that dream, but also have submitted ourselves to pursuing a full time income that must be replaced as well.

The beauty of pursuing our dreams is that they don't have to be an 8 hour a day job, they don't need to be all consuming. You can build your dream, while allowing your "day job" to provide the means to pursue that dream all the more effectively. You can become your own investor, putting money you earn working into your dream and while it may seem a hindrance to quick growth, nothing will stall any venture more quickly than missing a mortgage payment, or having a car repossessed. Nothing is more frustrating to the struggling dreamer than having to stop dreaming to worry about paying the bills.

Therefore structure your dream and work on your dream with your "day job" as the funding source, as the instigator that allows you to achieve rather than the chain that is holding you back from realizing your full potential. Go out in the world, dream big, make a difference, and when the time comes you'll have a solid foundation on which to rest when it does come time to truly walk away and pursue your dream full time.

Let the haters fuel your passion, not diminish it.

I'd like to take a moment and point out something that every person that has a "hustle" or big goal to achieve in the new year is going to run into, haters. It seems as though the social media maelstrom that is ever present in modern society, has let people become more and more critical of others, both their successes and their defeats. This isn't a new construct since the advent of social media, people have always been jealous and doubtful of others ability to succeed, it's simply that our connections allow others to voice these concerns more readily.

In anything that you do, others will look on in doubt and disbelief, my theory is that it's not that they don't want you to succeed on principle, it's that your success will make their stagnation that much more apparent. For those that do, those that don't are always quick to remark. Recently I've begun my own journey to what many would call an improbable goal, something that won't easily be achieved, something that will take hard work, dedication and much sacrifice on my part to accomplish. While I've worked very hard to cultivate a positive circle of doers and dreamers around me, there's still those in my life that are stuck in their own ruts, not dreaming, not moving forward. Personally I won't be satisfied with the "status quo", not for myself or my family. Too many times have I found that to do one must only dream. We as human beings are incredible in our capacity to create our own dreams, to affect our destiny's and too forge our futures in the image we desire.

Throughout your journey however those haters will pop up, so what do you do to handle them? My suggestion, and the process I follow is this. I imagine my dream, my goals as a fire that burns within me. I do this mostly because it's the best way to describe my own yearning to be "more than" what I currently am, to progress constantly and explosively within my own life. Instead of the haters extinguishing that fire, or lessening it's fervor, each and every time someone doubts my dream, or speaks to lessen it in any fashion, I picture them dumping gas on my passion, causing it to swell and gain in strength. The urban colloquialism of "haters gonna hate", is a simple reality of life, people will attempt to drag you down to their own stagnancy, to their own mediocrity, however I encourage you to hear the "hate", to embrace the haters and allow them to fuel that which drives you forward.

In this new year, I have one major goal to tackle, and while I'm not naive in the fact that it's going to take work, and it may take much more work than I've originally dreamed, I know that I will concur that goal, because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone-it I don't care about the haters! I encourage you all to take on a similar stance towards haters for if we all reach for the stars, the light will only allow each of us to shine brighter against the darkness.

New Year, new goals.

2015 is upon us. We're already 5 days into the year, resolutions have been made, and many have probably already been broken. This year I won't be focusing on "resolutions" but solid goals in several aspects of my life. For those that don't know, physically last year was a time of ups and downs for me, I completed my first triathlon, and then had two surgeries, both for gout, that kept me sidelined for the rest of the year. Thanks in large part to the healthy eating habits, and great nutrition in my ViSalus shakes I have been able to, even with a physical activity level near zero, keep my weight under control, and while I have gotten a little bit softer over the last 4 months, I've kept the "beer gut" at bay!

2015 will be another rough year physically as I'm still recovering from one surgery and have one more scheduled for early in the year, so I'll be sitting on those aforementioned sidelines for most of this year as well. While I could look at this as an end of the road, I've been able to recognize it for what it is, simply a road block along the way. In some ways being able to keep my physical goals lower than they have been in the past, i.e. this year I'm simply looking to maintain a healthy weight throughout my invalid phase, I've been able to focus more clearly on my business, personal, and professional goals for the new year.

So here they are my personal, business, and financial goals for 2015:

Personal: While I've taken on a lot as far as job responsibility in the past year, going from working at an MSP to running IT for a reasonably sized regional company, for the most part entirely alone, I've struggled throughout in maintaining a separation and distance from my work and home life. My goal in 2015 is to devote more time with my family, to miss fewer events and to be there more both for my son and my wife. I will also grow myself, in several areas, fitness, gaming, and online journalism to help support my business goals.

Business: My business goals actually reside in several areas, a brand launch with a new friend that is already gaining momentum, my ViSalus goals, and the launching of an entirely new venture that finds me in a vertical that is new to me as far as monetizing goes. For the brand launch, along with my partner I hope to have built a 50k user Facebook Fan base by mid year, and be talking about expanding our purely Facebook presence into a full-featured website with e-commerce capabilities. For my ViSalus business, this year I will hit regional director, and be driving a BMW, helping countless others achieve their goals along the way. As for my new venture, it's been a project that's loomed in my mind for quite some time, and I've honestly been "too scared" to give it a go, but my biggest goal for this is to, in some fashion, have created a reliable revenue stream out of this avenue by mid-year, at which point I plan to refocus and see where it can take me.

Professionally: Two bigs goals in this field, one is to establish myself as a programmer, which will mean learning software development from scratch, and devoting a large amount of time to study of that craft. Along with this developing in my current IT niche, both with certifications, and continued education will be key to realizing my long term (post 2015 goals).

There you have it, my goals for 2015. While I hadn't exactly planned on "penning" these out in this particular forum, I'm glad that I did and hope that you will join me in keeping me accountable, and please take a moment in the comments below and share some of your goals for 2015, and I will do my best to check up with you!

Happy New Year to all, and may your 2015 be a year of realized and exceeded expectations!