GET OUT OF POVERTY BY DESMOND ELIOT

Dream Big Dreams

Your mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Your thoughts alone have the power

to make you healthy or sick, rich or poor, popular or unpopular. Your mind is like a powerful force that can be turned in any direction to bring about wonderful results, or wreak havoc and destruction. Your main goal in life must be to harness your amazing powers and direct them intelligently and systematically toward achieving everything you really want.

■ A JOURNEY THROUGH ITALY

Let me tell you a story. Some years ago, I took my family to Italy on vacation. We toured several of the great art museums of Rome and Florence. In Florence, there is a special museum that was built to house the statue of David created by Michelangelo several hundred years ago. This is perhaps the most beautiful piece of sculpture in the world.The actual physical experience of being in the same room with it is something that none of us has ever forgotten.

The story of the creation of the David is very interesting and contains a lesson for all of us. Michelangelo was commissioned by the Medici’s to create a statue for the main square in Florence. 

The Medici’s were the wealthiest and most powerful family of Italy at the time. A commission for a statue from the Medici’s was not only a great honer; it was also a task that could not be re- fused. For two years, Michelangelo searched for a block of stone out of which he could create the kind of masterpiece the Medici’s were looking for.

Finally, on a side street of Florence, partially overgrown with weeds and covered with dirt, he found a huge slab of marble lying on wooden trestles. It had been hauled down from the mountains years before and had never been used.

Michelangelo had walked past this street many times, but this time he stopped and looked more closely. As he walked back and forth studying the block of marble, he actually envisioned the statue of David and saw it in its entirety.

■ GREAT SUCCESS REQUIRES LONG, HARD WORK

The sculptor quickly arranged to have workmen haul the block of marble to his studio some distance away. He then began the long, hard job of hammering and chiselling. It took him two solid years of work to create the rough outline of the statue. He then put his hammers and chisels aside and spent two more years polishing and sanding before the statue was complete.

Michelangelo was already famous as a sculptor, and the news that he was working on a major commission for the Medici’s spread all over Italy. When the day came for its first public viewing, thou- sands of people came from all over Italy and gathered in the main square. When it was unveiled, the crowd stood gaping in awe. It was breathtakingly beautiful. People cheered. Women fainted. The audience was amazed at the incredible beauty of the enormous statue. Michelangelo was immediately recognised as the greatest sculptor of his age.

Afterwards, when Michelangelo was asked how he was able to create such a masterpiece, he replied by saying that he saw the David complete and perfect in the marble. All he did was to remove everything that was not the David.

 ■ YOU ARE A MASTERPIECE

There are many parallels between yourself and the David. You are very much like a great masterpiece enclosed in marble as well. But the marble that envelops you, and most other people, is the marble of small, limited thinking and excessive worry about the possibilities of loss or failure, rather than an excited anticipation of the re- wards of success and achievement.

To realise your full potential, your greatest need is to break out of your limited thinking by dreaming big dreams and imagining unlimited possibilities. You need to remove all the negative beliefs that hold you back from becoming all you are capable of becoming.

But remember, even after the David had been released from the marble, it took Michelangelo two solid years of sanding and polishing to turn it into a masterpiece. In the same way, you also have to work on yourself, sanding and polishing, learning and practicing, for days, weeks, months, and even years, to develop and bring out all the talents and abilities that lie deep inside of you.

■ YOU CAN BECOME UNSTOPPABLE

The central purpose of this book is to help you change your thinking in such a way that you become absolutely unstoppable in achieving any goal you can set for yourself. Your goal is to develop yourself to the point psychologically where you become like an irresistible force of nature. You will be like the tide coming in, or like a powerful storm that sweeps across the land.

Your aim is to become so confident, courageous, strong, and resolute that you can set any goal for yourself with the firm knowledge that you can learn what you need to learn, and do what you need to do, to eventually achieve it. You will become so persistent and determined that nothing and no one can slow you down or alter your course. You will become truly unstoppable!

■ DREAM BIG DREAMS

You begin the process of becoming unstoppable by dreaming big dreams. Since everything you create in your world begins with a thought, the bigger the dreams you dream, the bigger the goals you will achieve. All successful men and women are dreamers. All peak performers are what are called “blue-sky thinkers.” They continually allow their minds to float freely when they think about what is possible for them. They look at the unlimited blue sky above them as the only limit to everything and anything that they could possibly be, or have or do.

Successful people continually practice “back from the future” thinking. They project into the future several years and imagine what their lives would look like if they had achieved all of their goals. They look back to the present, from the mental vantage point of the future, like looking from the top of a high mountain down to where they are actually standing in the valley, in the present. They then look at the path that they would have to take to get to where they want to be in the future.

By the law of correspondence, whatever you can clearly see on the inside, you will eventually experience on the outside. You should therefore visualise your goals with as much clarity and vividness as possible. Visualise your goals intensely and create within yourself the same feeling that you would have if you had already achieved your goals. Visualise your goals frequently. Replay a picture of your goal, as if you had already realised it, on the screen of your mind as many times a day as you possibly can. Visualise your goals for as long as you possibly can, preferably just before falling asleep each night.

Repeat these exercises of visualisation—vividness, intensity, frequency, and duration—until your goals become absolutely clear, living, breathing, exciting, clear pictures in your mind. The more skilled you become at moving from the dream through the goal to the visualisation, the more motivated and determined you will be. The more clarity you develop, the more courage and confidence you will have, and the more unstoppable you will become.

■ CREATE YOUR IDEAL FUTURE VISION

The most important part of dreaming big dreams is for you to define your ideal future vision. It is for you to think about what you want before you begin to think about what is possible for you. You dream big dreams by looking into the future and imagining that you have no

Limitations holding you back from achieving anything you set your mind on.

Detach yourself from your current situation and allow yourself to dream. Pretend for the moment that you have all the time and money you need. Imagine that you have all the connections and contacts, all the resources and opportunities, all the education and knowledge, all the skills and experience that you require to be, have, or do anything that you could dream of.

Imagine your ideal lifestyle. Imagine your ideal job or income. Imagine where you would like to live and how you would like to spend each day, each week, each month. Imagine your ideal family life. Imagine your ideal state of health. Design your perfect life in every respect.

■ MAKE YOUR OWN DREAM LIST

Here is an exercise for you. Take out a piece of paper and at the top write the words “Dream List.” Underline these words and then write down everything that you can think of that you could ever possibly want if you had no limitations whatsoever.

Most people are held back by their self-limiting beliefs. The way you burst these mental chains is with a dream list. The very fact that you can write down something that you would love to have someday means that you probably have within you, right now, the ability to achieve it. Let your mind float freely as you write. There will be lots of time to organize and evaluate your dreams later.

■ WHAT WOULD YOU DARE TO DREAM?

Here is a great question: “What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?”

If you were absolutely guaranteed of success in the achievement of any one goal, big or small, long-term or short-term, what would it be? If a billionaire took a liking to you and offered to write you a check to cover any goal that you could clearly define, what one goal would you choose?

If you could have any job, what would it be? If you could work for any kind of company, what kind of a company would you select? Where would it be, and what would it be doing? If your family life and your relationships could be perfect in every respect, what would they look like? Answer these questions clearly. Write them down.