In yesterday’s post, I talked about having dreams. However, let me be clear - we should have dreams, but they must turn into goals or else they are useless.

One motivational personality I followed was Tony Robbins, and I did try out his system. There may be a lot of people who swear by his system, but for me it overpromised and underdelivered. To be fair though, there were some useful things I did get out of it, and one was that there is a difference between dreams and goals. A dream is a fantasy that you cook up in your head, but a goal is also accompanied with a plan to get there. A person with a dream will say, “Someday I will have Y,” while a person with a goal will say “Someday I will have Y, and here’s how I’ll get it….”

One of the turn-offs I have with Tony Robbins is that he fed into what I believe were unhealthy values. Yeah, you can get that fancy European luxury car, but should that in and of itself be a source of happiness? I’ve seen a lot of people over-extend themselves to pay for that nice car, but rather than the person owning the car, the car owned the person. Adding to the discussion about dreams and a goals, the true statement should be, “Someday I will have Y, here is how I’ll get it, and here is why it is important for those who I love.”

The way I try to go about it is to start with a dream, make it into a goal, and make sure it is consistent with my values.

[ The link in this article to yesterday’s post has been fixed. It was previously broken. Thanks to Chris @ Martial Development for pointing this out to me. ]