Are you trying to balance bringing a dream to life with the demands of your current life?  Does it seem as if you constantly prioritize that which you “should” do over that which you wish to do, that your focus and activities continue to be centered on the way the things are instead of the way you’d like them to be?

I know that I struggle with this, and a conversation I had yesterday made me realize why that is.  I was wondering how to further my own creative process when I happen to be involved in a pretty intense client project that is not only taking up much of my time but also a lot of my creative brain power.  Now this has been a choice, of course.  I want to provide excellent value to my clients, so my brain naturally mulls the best ways to deliver that value, even when I’m not billing my time.  I’ve found it very hard to compartmentalize that. 

I’ve come to realize that the nature of my work for my clients creates pull.  That is, because I am responsible to someone else for delivering results, my client projects have a certain gravity that draws me to them.  My dreams, meanwhile, are only important to me.  If I do something about them today or I don’t, only I (and maybe a few close people) know that.  The threads of my dream that I have already drawn out of the ether lay fallow, humming and vibrating, but getting quieter and more still the longer I let them lie.  Eventually, if I don’t go back and pluck at them again, they will melt back into nothingness as if I had never raised them up in the first place.  Only I will remember that they ever existed.  This is the inescapable truth about being the master creator of your life:  You’re not done until the dream is real. 

My dreams, therefore, require push.  I have to focus on them and expend energy on them and cajole them along if they are to come true.  If I don’t apply push, they don’t happen.  So I thought, how can I get my dreams to pull, rather than require push?  Some great ideas came to mind.

First, invest.  I have to take a risk.  I have to take a big step, the taking of which will require me to expend energy toward my dream.  For me, some risks might include borrowing money, or renting a bigger office, or hiring more people.  Or all of those.  I have to get the world’s hooks tangibly into me and my dream so that I am obligated to move forward.

Second, share.  Tell everyone that I’m going to take the big risk, take it, and then tell everyone that I took it.  Send out an announcement. Have a party in my new office.  Introduce my new hires. 

In retrospect, I realize this worked with the writing of my book.  I purposely kept telling everyone that I was writing it, and then every time I ran into anyone, I was asked, “How’s the book coming?”  “What’s up with the book?”  The whole world, it seemed, was invested in my dream. 

But for the world to get invested, I need to get invested first.  So off I go, because I have a lot to do!  Stay tuned for what happens next!