4 Strategies To Achieve Your Dreams

A friend shared this quote with me the other day...

"Put your ass where your heart wants to be".

It's by Stephen Pressfield. It took a minute for it to sink in... and then BOOM!!! Short, direct, and SO POWERFUL.

Here's why. We all have wants, dreams and desires for our lives but we don't put ourselves in a place where we can actually make them happen. We may think about it from time to time but then dismiss it with some version of .... "I don't have time", "I'm too busy", "I shoulda done it 5 years ago", or "I'll get to it when...". We don't let ourselves get past the thought stage and put our ass in the place where the desire could actually become a reality.

What dreams and desires have you not taken action on yet?

We fool ourselves into thinking that in order to take action, we need to have the perfect plan, the right time and optimal conditions, but those are just ... well, excuses. The human brain is a master at rationalizing the decisions we make that keep us from the things we want.

The point is this, if we never step up to the plate, we will never hit the ball. (Apologies for the lame baseball analogy. No idea where that came from). Anyhoo... Just as our brains can talk out of the things we want for our lives, we can also use our brains to set us up for success in accomplishing our goals and dreams.

Here are 4 very successful strategies that I personally use (daily!) and that I share with my clients to help put our ass where our heart wants to be.

Write it down. When you get the dream out of your head and put it on paper, it becomes more real. It easy to dismiss something that you've never said out loud or acknowledged in any way. Getting it out of your head and into the outside world, even if it is just on paper, gives it space to breathe and grow.

Create a vision of you doing the thing or being in the place you want to be. Picture yourself there. If you want to run a marathon, picture yourself running. If you want to write a book, picture yourself at your computer, writing. Our brains don't know the difference between real or imagined happenings, so by doing this, we are programming our brain into thinking that it's already happened.

Tell yourself the success story (or write it or share with a friend) of how you accomplished your dream or reached your goal like it's already happened in past tense. Talk about the challenges you faced and how you overcame them, and how it felt to succeed. This is yet another way to fool your brain into thinking that you've already accomplished it. Our brains prefer patterns of repetition and predictability over new experiences, so by creating the vision and telling the success story, were fooling the brain to believe that it's repeating an already established pattern.

Take Action. This is where the rubber meets the road and how we put our ass where our heart wants to be. Take the tiniest action step you can possibly think of towards the goal you desire. Ie if it's running a marathon, put your running shoes on and go for a 5 min run. If it's writing a book, sit down at your computer and start writing. It doesn't matter if it's elegant prose or complete gibberish; the point is that you are putting your ass in the place your heart wants to be.

These 4 simple steps can cause magic to happen... or, at the very least, get you one step closer to your dream. The magic is that one small action step usually leads to another, and... well, you get the picture.

What heart desire have you yet to take action on?
What small step can you take today?

Put your ass where your heart wants to be and see where it takes you.

Here's the link to a video I did on Instagram about this.