Everyone has their own dreams… mine is to be supported by my writing.  Yours may be something completely different… it may be to travel the world, be a professional chef, or something else.  You probably even have more than one dream… I wouldn’t mind traveling the world, too.

There are a lot of individual steps to making your dream come true, of course, but those will vary depending upon what your specific dream happens to be.  There are four key components, however, that are part of making any dream come true.

These four things will help you to make your dream real, and will help you with most other aspects of your life at the same time.  They may come naturally to you, or you may have to work at adopting them, but once they become part of the way you approach the world, you will notice that things just start happening more easily.

So, on to the actual list…

How To Make Your Dreams Come True

1. Sharing

   The first key is to share your dreams with others.  This helps to make it more real and more conscious for you, making you more likely to notice opportunities related to it.  It also helps to remind you that it is there, and that it is something you are working toward… so that you don’t let your dreams die.

   Besides helping you to be more conscious of it, sharing your dreams with someone can also make them feel included in that dream, making them far more likely to wantto help you achieve it.  It makes them feel that by helping you, they are helping something that they are part of succeed, like they have partial ownership.  How much more likely would that make you to help someone that you know?

   And just think, even if someone likes you for other reasons and would be more than willing to help you, they can only do so by accident if they don’t know what it is that you want.  When you do open up and share your dreams with them, they can actively do things to give you a helping hand.

2. Networking

   Building on the first key, the second key is networking (and not the kind dealing with computers).  Networking refers to keeping in contact with people that you meet, people with whom you connect.  When you stay in contact, and check in on them from time to time, you keep that connection alive and you keep yourself in their thoughts, if something were to come up that they relate to you.

   For instance, with my particular dream, if I were to stay in contact with someone, and they happened to make friends with someone high up at a magazine or newspaper, they might suggest to that person that they read my articles, or even directly that they should consider having me write columns for their publication.  If I hadn’t stayed in contact, then that person likely wouldn’t have thought of me, and so that opportunity would never have come along.

   Here’s my confession:  This is my weak point.  I moved around a lot as a child, and I developed the habit of letting people go easily.  This is a place where putting some time and energy into changing myself would probably really pay off.

3. Persistence

   The third key to making your dreams come true is persistence… most likely it will take a fair amount of time to make your really big dreams come true.  You will need to have the persistence to see you through until that time, persistence in sharing your dreams, networking, openness… and persistence in just continuing through life’s ongoing costs and opportunities until you make it through.

   Keep in mind, though, that there is a difference between persistence and stubbornness… don’t just keep doing something that doesn’t work without a reason to believe something will change.  Persistence is continuing in spite of obstacles, not just continuing blindly.

4. Openness

   The final key is openness… being open to seeing opportunities that might take you in the general direction of your dreams, without being on the direct path.  This might be something like me going to a conference for authors and publishers, where I might meet someone who could eventually help me to get a deal to write a book, or a syndicated column.

   It might also be being open to making a friend somewhere that you might not ordinarily look for one… perhaps when you meet, in passing, a friend of a friend, or someone from your significant other’s family.  It might be that you are open to everyone, and are friendly to someone at a key moment in their life, and that person might eventually be the person who brings your dream to you.

   It might also be that you help someone achieve their own dream, without looking for anything in particular in return… just being open to whatever might come your way.

   Whatever life may throw your way, when you close up, you cut off opportunities for your dreams to come true.  It is natural to mentally curl up and try to protect the injured part of you, but that reaction is more often harmful than helpful over the long run.

If you can learn these things, or if they come naturally to you, you’ll likely find success in whatever it is that you do.  They don’t guarantee instant success, the instant fulfillment of all your dreams… they provide the tools to build the framework upon which success hangs, the ladder to your dreams.

It is relatively rare for someone to have all four of these attributes naturally… mostly you have at least one of the areas listed above where you are weak.  Fortunately, however, you can learn them, and make them part of who you are.  If you work at it hard enough and long enough, you can make them nearly as instinctive as someone who DOES have them naturally.

My weakness, as I said above, is networking… it simply doesn’t come naturally for me.  I’m working on it, and intend to keep working on it, but it’s something I have to consciously work on right now… hopefully I’m persistent enough to make it more natural.

What about you?  What’s your weakness?