InnerSelf.com

What torment for a woman to give birth to a child afflicted at birth with what doctors call "challenges". Uniformly advised by doctors that she had to institutionalize the child, she said, "No way". Disruptive and self-destructive, he couldn't even be hugged or kissed. The only answers her doctors and specialists kept providing were choices she wouldn't consider. So, she kept him at home.

He was so disruptive at school that he was thrown out. Permanently. Then another school expelled him... and another. His speech defect, and the flat feet which excluded him from athletic pursuits, and the mocking of the other kids, all added up to a ton of pain. He was eventually kicked out of seventeen schools. What hope for a productive future can such a child's parent expect?

At a private Swiss school, he discovered a fascination with, and love of, art. It calmed him considerably.

Back in the States, with a family of his own to feed, he struggled and struggled. He even wrote a screenplay that attracted interest. Broke as can be, he actually turned down a whopping $250,000 for the script, because the buyers wanted the script outright. He, on the other hand, refused to let go of the script unless he could also direct the movie!! Wait, it gets better: AND, he wanted to star in it, too!

You've Got To Have a Dream to Make It Come True!

Know for sure that you've got to have a dream if you're going to make a dream come true. Put a date on it, and it's not a dream anymore. It's now called a goal. At 20 million dollars per movie, the guy who we know as "Rocky" is doing pretty well for himself. Is he smarter than you? Better connected? Nope. He had a desired destination, and a map for getting there. Take a desire; put a deadline on it. Now it's a goal.

It is the most concise explanation of how computers work; how the human brain and system work: with goals. The fancy word is 'cybernetics'. A dream with a deadline is a goal. Please remember that. Sylvester Stallone gives us every reason to think that he is a sensitive, sensible, philanthropic, superwealthy, happy individual. He was not born that way, and he did not get that way by accident.

Setting and Achieving Goals

He asked himself a whole series of better questions, and, he got better answers. If you look back, I'm willing to wager that Christopher Reeves, breathing only by grace of God, a breathing apparatus, and enormous personal desire, has actually done more towards achieving his lifetime goals than you have. Now just stop & think about this a moment. Here's a man who had every 'reason' or excuse to just stop trying.

Instead, he looked at his life & his family as BEING every reason to keep trying. Advancing his physical rehabilitation, doing work for spinal injury causes, directing a major motion picture... if Chris Reeves could do all this, can you please tell me why you have almost certainly embraced little more than mediocrity in the past 24 hours?

Do You Have a Dream?

Exactly what have you done TODAY towards your long-term dreams? Do you even have a dream? If you don't know precisely where you're going, I'll bet you end up somewhere else. If you had a genie, and 3 wishes, what would they be? I'm asking you to put it in writing in the next 60 seconds. If you can't be bothered, you're a fool to waste your time reading any further. If you're smart enough to do it now, you will, I promise, be one step closer to your dream than if you don't. This is basic logic. Are you with me so far? Don't talk: DO IT!

Sylvester Stallone and Chris Reeves, successful men, describe exactly what they want. Whether it's a fun wedding, or a better job, or directing a movie, or increasing your income a modest 50% within 8 weeks: it doesn't matter WHAT it is you want. If you know exactly WHY you want it, and can describe in detail what it is you want, you have already accomplished at least 1 or 2 percent of the job. Now you only have 98 steps left! You can actually change your life in the next 5 minutes.

What Do You Most Desire in Life?

Put up or shut up. Describe, out loud & in writing, precisely what you most want in life. Begin creating a plan by writing out who can help you, and what 5 smaller steps you'd have to take in order to do or obtain it. It's really true: you can change your life in the next 5 minutes, not by talking about what you know... rather, by USING what you know. Talk less; do more: it's the only way we'll ever know who you are. The way you spend today's hours is a pretty good video preview of how you will be remembered. So, if your challenges and obstacles are less daunting than what Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Reeves, and so many others have faced, what are you waiting for?

This is the most powerful day of your life, a day to put a date on your dream, listing who can help you, and breaking into ten, twenty, or even fifty or a hundred smaller steps. Why wait?

Should you even momentarily think that this is difficult, please remember that you take these precise steps every single time you want something urgently. Here, you're invited to write it down simply because writing it down is a shortcut: it helps you get there faster. If you knew better, you'd do better. If you're living your dream life of passion, excitement, and fun; of service, and relaxing and productivity, then by all means, continue. Otherwise, hush up and try doing it the way masters and millionaires do it. You see, they know better; they're doing it better. If you're not getting it from the horse's mouth, at which end of the horse will we find you?

Recommended book:

Living on Purpose: Straight Answers to Life's Tough Questions
by Dan Millman.

Info/Order this book

About The Author

Steve Rubin has read one to three books per day for 31 years, refuted every wheelchair-prognosticating surgeon after a 100+MPH wreck. He has broken 81 corporate records and interviewed 1,200 millionaires. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

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