“What are your biggest dreams?” Most people will share these dreams while at the same time talking about how impossible they are, that they are just too good to be true. For every seemingly impossible dream, you can think of, think of someone who has done the very thing you are dreaming about. Start looking into what they did to make that dream happen.

One way to approach this is to begin asking yourself what one thing you would do if you absolutely knew you would not fail. I do not really want to do all the things I have dreamed of doing in my life. A few I lack the ability to do. Some others I lack the drive to follow through with everything involved in getting the dream accomplished.

I have said for years that I don’t yet know what I want to be when I grow up. That has meant not limiting dreams and always being open to possibilities in life that come up. This has resulted in some exciting adventures in my life. During college, I struggled with the decision of where to attend seminary. There were twelve schools around the country that met the criteria It was looking for. I asked someone whose advice I respected was how to make the choice. He advised me to pick four schools that represented different areas of emphasis as well as different areas of the country. His counsel was to expose me to as many different things as possible during this period of my education.

The choice I made reflected as much diversity as I could have envisioned. It opened some possibilities I had never considered before and caused me to question and examine many things I had always taken for granted. As a result of this experience, while many of the vocational choices I made were consistent with the values I have always held, they were based on a broader base of experiences than I had previously known. Even though we made the decision to return to the state I grew up in, that decision was made in the context of other options available to us.

In the context of our experience, my wife was able to make a significant career decision that included graduate school. We made some decisions to enable these things to happen that we might not have had the courage to make if not for the growth we experienced during this part of our lives.

During this part of our lives, our individual and our shared dreams helped give us a sense that as we moved forward we could not and would not fail. We dared to dream big, and the dreams led to even bigger and more exciting things in our lives.

Are there dreams in your life that have seemed impossible? Are there dreams you have pursued anyway? How has that gone for you? Do you have dreams right now that you would like to follow, especially if you knew you could not fail? Write one of these dreams down and think about what it would mean in your life if it became a reality in your life.

As we move forward, it can be helpful to take stock of our dreams. They don’t have to be life-changing, just big enough to get you excited. What is one dream you could see yourself following, especially if you knew you could not fail? I have one in mind. Do you? Let’s each examine those dreams. Where will be if and when we follow ours?

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