There are no guarantees that you will show up tomorrow.
It’s not an absolute certainty.
There are a lot of people who have not made it to today.
So you have to believe that there are no tomorrows.
In this world, there are so many reasons to pass off the dreams of today for the more attractive and alluring prospect of tomorrow. Tomorrow sounds pretty great when you are tired, sore and ready to veg-out. Tomorrow is a great thing to believe in, but you can get easily caught in continuing to dream days ahead without acting in the only moments you only have.
These moments build those dreams. Without them, the dreams will never happen.
“If you want a thing bad enough to go out
and fight for it,
to work day and night for it,
to give up your time, your peace and your sleep for it…
if all that you dream and scheme is about it,
and life seems useless and worthless without it…
if you gladly sweat for it and fret for it and plan for it
and lose all your terror of the opposition for it…
if you simply go after that thing you want
with all of your capacity, strength and sagacity,
faith, hope and confidence and stern pertinacity…
if neither cold, poverty, famine, nor gout,
sickness nor pain, of body and brain,
can keep you away from the thing that you want…
if dogged and grim you beseech and beset it,
with the help of God, you will get it!”
– Les Brown
I’m a dreamer – if you haven’t figured that out by now well…yikes.
I love to dream. I love to sketch plans. I love to draw them out on the huge blackboard in my room. I love to try to peer ahead and figure out where I am headed and how to best get there.
But I’ve learned one lesson that really put me in my place about a year ago.
You have to earn the right to constantly dream.
Anyone can dream – yes, of course. This is different though. I don’t say earning the right as in you have to be given this ability by someone or something.
I say earn the right as in…giving your dreams the respect they deserve. I am convinced that nothing in this world needs more nurturing and protection.
The one thing that perfectly attaches itself to a dream is action. Those are the stepping stones that allow you to earn the right to dream.
What I mean is that you have to be fully aware of the fact that if you dream without putting any sort of action behind it, you will singlehandedly destroy those same dreams.
Earning the right is about being a man or a woman who can think of a grand idea in which the world can benefit from and then being willing to put it into action.
If you haven’t earned the right to constantly dream, you will be living too far forward of this moment and you will waste your life away just as if you were living in the past.
You can make yourself just as miserable dreaming as you can by living in the bad events of the past.
Like I said before, I figured that out last year. I dreamed too much and didn’t act on those same dreams enough.
It yielded me nothing but a graveyard of dead and dying dreams…and I promise you, that’s a really tough thing to see.
So dream. But ACT.
If you aren’t willing to act, then be prepared to see your dreams sift through your fingers like sand.
There are no tomorrows
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project
Hannah! Thank you. Taking action is the hardest thing ever! But my one tip is to make concrete plans – daily, monthly, yearly steps to get to that goal. Then taking actions becomes a whole lot easier because it helps you see the end better. That’s something that’s really really worked for me. When you can have faith in the plan you can have faith that the end result is possible. If you don’t have the plan, your chances diminish significantly. Glad you like the posts!
This so resonates with me! I am always dreaming of new places and career ideas or things I’d want to go back to school for. But taking action isn’t always easy. It takes courage and daring to jump out of your comfort zone and really do something new, something you’ve dreamed of. I love your blog Evan – your posts always make me think long and hard about my life and what I’m really doing to make it the best it can be. This post was no exception. Thank you!