How to Dream Big and Start Small

No matter what you want to achieve in life, you need to dream big and start small. You see, we all have something we want to achieve in life. We have dreams and goals to pursue.

And what makes your dreams come true are the intensity of your thoughts and the power of your actions.

If your dreams are not exciting enough, you will never want to take action because they don’t inspire and motivate you to take action and do the uncomfortable. You’d rather spend time playing games or watching Netflix right? Why do you want to work hard to achieve something that is not exciting, isn’t it?

And if your actions are too difficult to execute, you will procrastinate. We don’t like to do difficult things. We’re wired to stay within our comfort zone and to do things that we are familiar with.

This is why it is so important to dream big and start small. It is a principle that you must follow to achieve success in life.

Why do you need big dreams?

This is easy to understand. Your dreams need to be big and bold because you want your dreams to encourage you and drive you.

Think about it, if you are currently earning $5,000 a month, do you think making an additional $100 is going to be exciting for you? Not at all. But what if you can double your income to $10,000? What if you can earn more to buy your dream house and car, and travel the world with the people you care about without worrying much about money? What if you can enjoy the dream lifestyle you have always been thinking about?

Now, you don’t want to just dream big, you also want to make your dream interesting. You want to use your dream as an inspiration to drive you forward. Like what Jobs said:

“If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.”

Thus, make your dreams as big as possible. And make your goals exciting too. You want to feel excited and passionate whenever you think about living your dreams and achieving all your goals.

Read: 10 Tips How to Make Your Goals Motivating and Exciting

How to have big dreams?

So, how do you dream big? How do you make your dreams and goals exciting so that you will be pulled towards them?

Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Adopt the “Blue Sky Thinking” technique where everything is possible.

You don’t want to have things stop you or block you from thinking big. For instance, if you want to travel the world, then stop worrying about having no money to do so. You just want to dream big for now. You want to first identify the “why” and the “what” before you plan for the “how”.

2. Dream according to the future you want, not based on your current situation.

Many people are thinking too small because they dream according to their current situation. They don’t think about the future that they really want. For example, if they are earning $10,000 a month, they don’t dare to dream too big from their current position. They just dream a little bit forward from their current lifestyle.

3. Stretch your dreams and goals, and make them challenging.

Have you read Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule? If you don’t read it. He will inspire you to 10X your dreams and goal. You want to dream big and set stretch goals that force you to go beyond your comfort zone. You want to make things a little challenging so that you will be motivated to achieve them.

Why start small?

Once you have big and exciting dreams, what you need to do next is to start small. This is where a lot of people get it wrong. They think that because they dream big, thus, they need to take big and bold actions too, which is not often the case.

Success starts small. If you study the biographies of successful people like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Michael Jordan, etc., you will know that all of them started small.

They don’t become a millionaire or a billionaire overnight. They have big dreams, but they started like everybody else, from scratch and build to the top. Just take a look at this picture below:

You have to understand that success is a journey. And the only way to make the journey is to take the first step.

Plus, when you start small, things are easier for you. It takes less motivation and willpower to do something that is easy than things that are difficult.

And when the resistance is lower, you tend to be more willing to take the action. Think about it, it is easier to do 5 push-ups than to do 50 push-ups, right? And it is easier to write 500 words than to write 5,000 words.

The thing is that you just need to start small and focus on writing 500 words. And if you keep writing, eventually, you will have a 5,000 words article. That’s how books are written. And that’s how success can happen too.

Therefore, have big dreams, when it comes to making progress, start small.

Read: Why Start Small? The 5 Important Benefits of Starting Small

How to start small?

So, how do you start small? Say, if you have a big goal like writing a book, how can you tackle this goal and make your progress interesting so that you will want to follow through?

Here are 3 suggestions to start small:

1. Start by taking just one small step.

You can achieve anything you want if you commit to taking just one small step a day. For instance, if you want to lose weight, commit to exercising for just 15 minutes a day. You don’t need to workout for 2 hours, but you just need to make it sustainable by taking just one small step.

• How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
• How do you write a book? One word at a time.
• How do you build a successful blog? One article at a time.
• How do you travel the world? One country/place at a time.

2. Create a plan and break down your goals.

One thing that many people don’t do is that they don’t plan. Planning is important because it makes you become proactive rather than reactive. When you have a plan, you will know what to do. But when you don’t have a plan, you become part of someone’s plan.

In addition, break down your goals and reverse-engineer the things that you want to achieve. Work backward and find out what are the steps you need to take to get there. If you want to learn more about setting and achieving your goals and living a successful life, I strongly recommend you check out Goal Setting Formula.

3. Ask yourself, “What is the one small step I can do now?”

Yes, what is the one thing you can do right now? Don’t worry even if the action step is as small as making a phone call. You just need to make progress. Here’s what Jack Canfield says about taking small steps every day:

“If you would go every day to a very large tree and take five swings at it with a very sharp ax, eventually, no matter how large the tree, it would have to come down.”

Just focus on taking one small step at a time. And if you are more committed, make it 5. Take 5 small action steps every day. And within a month, you will have 150 small victories. And in a year, you will have 1,825 small victories that will make a huge impact on your life.

Read: Success Cycle: How to Leverage Small Success to Build Bigger Ones

Take Action Now

Now you know why you need to dream big and start small, here’s one more thing you need to do – act now.

There is no point to dream big and knowing the importance of starting small, but you don’t act. The biggest difference between the successful and the unsuccessful is execution.

Unsuccessful people only talk about their dreams, they don’t act. Successful people put their dreams into action.

Now’s your turn to act. Do what you need to do and make your dreams a reality.