Creating the Future of Your Dreams

Hello my friends, and welcome to the Discover Your Personal Power Blog.  Information to help you live a life filled with peace, purpose, and power. My goal is to give you something fun and meaningful to make your day a little brighter.  I want to help you find your light and your personal power within. 

Listen to the Podcast here

Today we are talking about Creating the Future of your dreams. 

When I was a young girl, I heard this story from one of my church leaders and it always stuck with me.  Gordon B. Hinkley was working for a railroad company in the central offices in Denver, Colorado. He was in charge of what is called head-end traffic during a time when nearly everyone rode passenger trains.

“One morning I received a call from my counterpart in Newark, New Jersey. He said, ‘Train number such-and-such has arrived, but it has no baggage car. Somewhere, 300 passengers have lost their baggage, and they are mad.’

“I went immediately to work to find out where it may have gone. I found it had been properly loaded and properly trained in Oakland, California. It had been moved to our railroad in Salt Lake City, been carried to Denver, down to Pueblo, put on another line, and moved to St. Louis. There it was to be handled by another railroad that would take it to Newark, New Jersey.

“But some thoughtless switchman in the St. Louis yards moved a small piece of steel just three inches, a switch point, then pulled the lever to uncouple the car. We discovered that a baggage car that belonged in Newark, New Jersey, was in fact in New Orleans, Louisiana—1500 miles from its destination. 

This train’s unfortunate journey can, in many ways, be compared to our lives—where seemingly small decisions could take us to a place we never intended to go.

“Decisions Determine Destiny.”

The choices we make every day affect our present and our future. 

“This is your life and the future is in your hands.   The life of your dreams is not a freeway featuring unlimited vision, unrestricted speeds, and untested skills. Rather, it is known by many forks and turnings, sharp curves, and controlled speeds. Your driving skills are put to the test every day. 

What kind of future do you want?  What is the life of your dreams? 

I think as we pay closer attention to the choices we make in our everyday life and recognize that personal accountability of our own choices, we will begin to make choices that will give us the results we want most.  Understanding and accepting the personal responsibility for our choices allow us also to accept responsibilities for the outcomes. 

Quite often, we may find it is much easier to ignore or not accept responsibility for the choices we make.  Sometimes, we may think we can make bad decisions and escape the consequences of those decisions.   We want someone to rescue us from our bad choices.  Sometimes, We don’t want to admit that our decisions have real-life consequences.  We try to blame our circumstances, the environment, other people for our results, but ultimately that will not solve the problem and it doesn’t resolve or change the outcome.  Only we can do that. Try as you might, though, we can’t escape the consequences of our decisions, whether good or bad.

Gary Blair said: 

"Every choice carries a consequence.  For better or worse, each choice is the unavoidable consequence of its predecessor.   There are no exceptions.  If you can accept that a bad choice carries the seed of its own punishment, why not accept the fact that a good choice yields a desirable consequence"

Martine Kohe said “The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose. – 

There is great power in being able to make choices in our life.  We have the choice of what kind of life we’ll live, and what type of person we want to be.  We aren’t just a result of how our parents treated us or what society tells us is cool, or a product of our environment.   We are a result of the choices we make every day.  

Are you familiar with Harry Potter?

JK Rowling was a single mom, struggling with depression and trying to survive on welfare when she published her first book, based on her idea for a character named Harry Potter.

Jobless, Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book from cafes with her infant daughter sleeping next to her. She sent the manuscript to book publishers but received “loads” of rejections, one after another.

In a 2013 commencement speech at Harvard University called “The Benefits of Failure,” Rowling talked of her struggle between pursuing her writing and pleasing her parents.

“I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, wrote novels.”

Sadly, Rowling’s parents took the view that her “overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.”

It was a dark time in her life, but Rowling has no regrets now. Instead, she says

 “It is impossible to live without failing unless you live so cautiously that you haven’t lived at all.”

Despite her early differences with her parents, Rowling is adamant about not blaming her parents. In her speech, she explains that she doesn’t blame them, and says that there’s an expiration date on how long you can blame your parents.

“The moment you are able to take the wheel,” she says, “the responsibility lies with you.”  We get to choose how we spend our time, energy, and talents every day. 

 As we accept responsibility for the results of our lives, the more we own what we’ve created and we recognize our own role in the creation of it, then the more freedom, power, or choice we have in what we want to create for our future. 

I think it is important when accepting responsibility for our outcomes, which also means that we accept that we are human.  Life is full of choices.  We are not going to make 100% good choices.  We do the best we can with what we have at the time.  Accepting responsibility is not meant to have you beat yourself up,  it is meant to help you recognize your choice and your accountability. So as you learn to accept that responsibility, be compassionate with yourself.  

The Choices We Make Today Determine Our Future

You’ll probably remember Newton’s law of Motion that was taught in school that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Likewise, the universal law of cause and effect, which is also common teaching in Buddhism, also explains why we have to make careful choices in almost every aspect of our life as every decision we make could have a significant impact on what we become in the future.

Change Your Life By Being Responsible

By being responsible for our own lives, and being accountable for the decisions we’ve made we can change our lives for the better. 

Here are a few examples of areas in our life that can be directly impacted by our life choices.

To obey or to disobey.  When we were growing up, we were given rules to follow at home, in school, and in our community.  They could be formal or written rules or verbal rules that set the norms.  We were also told that disobedience will lead to disciplinary actions or punishments. Say, when you disobey your parents, you get grounded when caught.  Or if you disobey your teacher, you are more likely to be called to stand in the front the whole time; or if you ignore traffic rules, you'll get pulled over by the police. 

Relationships

Who you choose to build relationships with and how you nurture or ignore those relationships affect your future. Relationships with family members, whether immediate or beyond can have a direct impact on your life. The closeness or distances you choose to maintain with family affects your life. You get to decide how important these relationships are in your life.  And the choices you make to either nurture or ignore will create how these relationships will be in the future.

The choice of how you build and nurture other relationships in your personal and professional life makes a difference.

The company you keep

Choosing between good friends who lift you up and friends who encourage you to do things that are not in keeping with your core values.  Keeping good friends allows for social connection that is so important for a happy life, and it also contributes to keeping us mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy by providing companionship when we find ourselves struggling or facing difficult challenges.  Good friends can lift our spirits by making us laugh, giving constructive advice, and just listening.  Good friends lift and support you. They have your back and they inspire you to be better.  On the other hand, peers that appear to ‘good friends in disguise’ but drag you into trouble, causing more problems, agonies, and emotional and social downturns.

In addition, the friends you choose to make and how you choose to nurture these bonds over a period of time impact your life. 

The Choice on the importance you associate with your Personal Health

Your overall health is a function of many things – the key determinants being the diet you consume and the nature of exercise you ensure on a regular basis. Of course, the prerequisite is that you need to be aware of these two aspects of your everyday life and knowledgeable on how they affect your life. Beyond this, you need to ensure that you invest the required time and effort to eat wisely and exercise regularly.

Life is made up of both major and minor choices.  Both can dictate how our life unfolds.    “The end result of your life will always be the sum total of the choices you make every day. 

There are so many choices that we can make.

• We can choose if we’ll reflect our environment, or if we affect our environment.
• We can choose to be happy, or not.
• We can choose how we react to hard times in our life, with positivity or negativity.
• We can choose to take responsibility for our actions or blame others for our failures.
• We can choose to be a victor or take on the role of a victim.

What choices are you making in your life?  Are they the ones that result in the future that you want? 

Brooke Castillo had a podcast episode and she talks about it as creating “alternative futures”  When you make your choices today, consider the future you are creating. 

You can create any kind of future you want.  Your future can be anything you can imagine.  

This is where our creative thinking process comes in.  Go back to podcast 45, Opening your Mind to Creative Thinking where we talk about how to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions for challenges or obstacles in our path. 

Sometimes, I think imagining the future is difficult for us.  As adults, we don't use our creative thinking muscles as much as maybe we did as kids. 

The cool thing about the future is that it is totally in our heads. In our thoughts.  And we choose our thoughts, right.  So in actuality, we can create any future we want.  The possibilities are endless.  

I'm going to encourage you when you think about the future.  Dream big.

I think sometimes we don’t want to dream big because it scares us.  We think it is too big or that we are not worthy of wanting great things.  We listen to other people tell us it is too hard, or unrealistic, or that it will take too much time, energy, and effort. 

But the thing is, you create your future.  You get to choose and if you choose to dream big and do a little work along the way, you might just surprise yourself. 

I know I talked about Brick walls back in one of the first few episodes, but I use this anecdote in my life pretty regularly.  Obstacles or challenges or what may seem like brick walls, Randy Pausch in his book called The Last Lecture says the brick walls are not there to keep us out.  The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.  The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough. 

When faced with obstacles I like to ask myself, “How bad do I want it?'' If I really want it, then it is worth any effort it takes. 

I want you also to know that your dreams don’t have to be realistic.  So often we use the excuse, that we just want to be realistic,  I think this an excuse and It keeps us small. you can dream of anything your want. You can dream up a future with unlimited possibilities.  If you could have anything and everything you truly wanted, what would that be? 

So Let's do this today.  Let's think about the future. 

What do you want to see in your future?  Anytime you plan for a future event.  And you decide where you want to go, you plan backward right. 

Think about your GPS, if you want to travel to New York City to do some shopping and catch a show and you put that as the destination in your GPS.  The GPS asks you where you want to go?  What is your destination?

So let's think about this.  Where do you want to go?  Where is a destination you would like to get to? 

Think about your deepest desires for who you want to be, what you want to do in the next few years, and the more specific the better. 

Then remember that it is your choices that will get you there. 

Abraham HIck teaches that there is energy in the universe that holds everything we could ever want or imagine and by simply thinking of a goal or a wish, we create the equivalent manifestation of that goal or wish. He says as soon as you can truly imagine and create it in your mind, the universe creates it for you.  When you use your mind to choose and create the future you want.  The choices you make every day will get you there. 

Abraham says Your job is simply to align your energy with the energy of that desire.  To align with your desire, you must put yourself into a positive state of emotion, in order to allow the desire to come to you. 

Years back during a hockey game between the Boston Bruins and Edmonton Oilers there were some technical issues, so the game was paused. To kill time the announcers decided to interview Wayne Gretzky, the Oiler's number one player.

Asked why he was so successful despite not being the biggest or fastest player on the field he replied, ‘I don’t go where the puck is; I go where the puck is going to be.’ His success didn’t depend on chasing the puck but on staying one step ahead and anticipating where the puck would be likely to go.

This analogy tells us to see our choices in the same way Gretzky sees the puck. We can look at our future, as a cumulation of our choices as we choose to stay one step ahead of where we want to be.  

Go where the puck is going to be. Staying one step ahead and anticipating where the puck would be likely to go.  Making the choices that will give you the future of your dreams.  

Decisions determine destiny. 

One of the most important skills we can develop is the capacity to make choices that are in alignment with the future we want most.  

The choices we make about food and exercise influence our physical health. The choices we make about how to respond to life’s adversities affect our psychological well-being. And the choices we make about self-improvement direct the very course of our lives. That is the power of choice.

The future of your dreams is determined by the choices you are making right now.  Your present choices and actions impact and create your future. 

Start by just being aware.  Aware of the choices you are making in your everyday situations.  The first step in creating the future of your dreams is simply recognizing that you are making choices. Even avoiding making a choice at all is a choice: You’re chosen the status quo.

“If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.” –Rush

Here is a perfect example from a school teacher. , a student comes into a session to work on math, and he doesn’t understand the homework. The teacher asks him to pull out his notes, but he doesn’t have any. The teacher then asks him if he requested help from the teacher or asked questions in class, and he says he didn’t. The then teacher points out that while he was sitting passively in class, confused by the new math topic, he chose not to write down what the teacher was doing on the board, and he chose not to ask for help. He didn’t realize he was making those choices, so he didn’t realize that he could choose differently.

The reason it’s so important to recognize that you’re making choices is that it gives you power. If you don’t like the results your choices are getting you, you have the power to make different choices.

 If you don’t feel proud of the life you’re living, you can choose to change

All those little choices add up. Be an active agent in your life.  Be in charge of your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by exercising your right to choose.  You don’t have to be a passive victim of life’s difficulties, the world's injustice, or your own bad habits.  You can create the change you want to see in the world.  You can create the future of your dreams.  

I have to get one more Harry Potter mention in her.  When Harry has finished recounting the story of his experience in the Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledore dismissed everyone else from his office, and he asks Harry to have a seat.  He thanks Harry for the loyalty that called Fawkes to him in the Chamber, then opens the discussion up to Harry regarding his meeting with the teenage Tom Riddle–perhaps knowing or anticipating Harry’s anxieties about their similarities.  Addressing Harry’s concerns, Dumbledore says, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”   

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” –Albus Dumbledore

What future will you choose?

When we recognizing that we always have the power to choose itis is liberating. It means that you can decide where you want to go in life. It means that you can choose to do work that matters. It means that you can, through the choices you make, bring forth an incredible future.

Abraham Maslow taught that each moment presents you with a choice: You can step forward into growth or backward into safety. Challenging yourself or choosing to try something new can be scary, but it’s the only way forward. 

Go big and choose the future of your dreams.