Small Biz Franchise Blog

Franchise Success: Are you too old or too much of an achiever to dream?

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Lizette Pirtle

There are many franchisees and franchisors who hold the misconception that the only way to get things done is by doing and that dreams are a waste of time. They tout that dreaming is for kids or something you do at night when you are unconscious. And, they believe that dreamers are losers.

My most successful accomplishments have arisen from the careful visualization of what I wanted; in other words, from dreaming. In all of these instances I did approximately 70% dreaming and 30% preparation. In fact, whenever I have done more preparation than dreaming my results have suffered.

So, what are dreams? Dreams are stories we create in our minds about the things we want, what they will do for us, how they will make us and others feel. They include details, colors, smells, feelings, words, objects and everything that makes them real in our minds. Dreams are freeing because they are not time bound. The more we crystallize our dreams, the more we transform them into our vision, the guiding force of our life.

Dreams are freeing. They don’t have to be based on reality; in fact if they are too based on reality they will not be expansive enough; they would just repeat an experience. Of course, we may already have reached our dreams and now just wish to keep them. But normally when we dream, we wish for something that we don’t currently have. Dreams are like a model of the life we want to have.  Buckminster Fuller once said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” That’s what we do when we dream; we build models of the reality we want.

Some franchisees have asked me: “Why not use the word “goals” instead of dreams. Aren’t goals things we want too?  Goals are time bound; they have a timeline.  Goals are based on reality; they are measurable and thus they don’t necessarily engage our creativity and imagination. Goals tend to create stress and thus they lack the freeing nature of dreams. The energy we feel when we think of our goals is very different from the energy we experience when we visualize our dreams. When we don’t reach our goals on the planned schedule disappointment and a sense of failure arise. Because dreams aren’t constrained by time they are more flexible and engender more joy.

Dreams are the first step. With our diligent clarification through visualization sessions dreams become our visions; we can actually see them happening. As our vision develops, goals will be created organically from the process. The dream that included being your own boss with continuous dedicated thought becomes your vision and from that that vision the steps of exploring franchising and other business ownership options arise until eventually one day you are living your dream as a franchisee. A word of caution, the dream is not “owning a business” or “being your own boss;” the dream is what that meant, how it was supposed to make you feel, how your life changed as a consequence. This is what you must connect with and keep the connection going. The idea is not to live in a world of dreams but to make our dreams our reality.

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other. 

Douglas Everett

Do you still think you are too old or too much of an achiever to dream?Which dreams have you turned into reality? Please share.

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