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.