How does someone accomplish their dream? A lot of people are dissatisfied with the way their lives currently are. I think the most common areas that people would like to improve cut across cultures. They want a better job. They want a romantic partner. They want more money. They want more prestige. Sometimes, the dreams go deeper. We want to be understood. That is at the basis of all of the other dreams. If people understood us, then we would be more valued in the workplace. We would get higher marks in school. We would get the partner of our dreams, someone we truly deserve and who deserves us. We would earn more money if people comprehended us better, because a higher, more appropriate value would be placed on our contribution to society. Prestige would be within our grasp because people would admire us for the good that we do that no one sees.
But how do we accomplish this universal desire to be understood? I think the first step is to understand ourselves, and the best way for us to do that is to see ourselves as God sees us. He knows every bit of potential that we may contribute to humankind. What is the best way to see ourselves the way God sees us? Ask ourselves after every interaction we have with people throughout the day, what does God think about how I just was? Sometimes we can take the credit that He would be pleased. All too often, of course, we perceive that He is not happy. However, the more we ask this question and evaluate ourselves according to God’s perspective, the more in tune we will be with He who sees us perfectly. Once we have that under control, we can turn our attention to deeper, more profound issues.
After we evaluate ourselves on a regular basis, many times daily, we can begin to ask ourselves, are we doing good more than we are doing bad? If the answer is that we are doing more good, we can try to think about how to figure out what it is exactly that we want. What would our ideal career be, for example, if we really thought about it and did not have to worry about depressing realities? (If the answer is that we are doing more bad than good, we need to fix that before we can begin to trust our instincts about other aspects of our lives). We need to think about these things.
Many people do not think enough. We need to think, because if we do not think, we do not grow. And if we do not grow, we regress. If we regress, then we will never accomplish even the most basic of our dreams, let alone our most profound and significant ones. How can we figure out what we would like to spend our time doing? Whenever we feel a spark of true happiness, we should write about it in a journal. Or even email it to ourselves, if that is easier. We should see if there is a pattern. Even if we are not able to make a career out of what makes us happiest, we can volunteer or in a more private way take advantage of those natural abilities and interests that are a fundamental part of every human being.
Many of us live very busy lives. One of the tricks to being happy and to accomplish our dream of being understood is to think about it, to take the time to actively reach that goal, just as we work hard in our everyday lives to realize more tangible objectives. We can start today. We should start today. Mustn’t we start today?
