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The Dream List

Setting hopes and dreams together for the next 10 years (Candace)

As I sit by our beautiful hotel pool in Siem Reap, Andrew asleep in our room, following a 4:30 wake up call to see the sun rise at Ankgor Wat, I am thinking to myself, “How blessed are we?”  We have had the most amazing year, with adventure and love and friends and travel.  We are building our family with a foundation of curiosity and communication and exploration.  What more could I want in life?”

Well, plenty.

You see, I think it is healthy to keep an active list of dreams we’ve still yet to accomplish.  It helps us, both individually and collectively as a couple, to proceed through life with purpose and know when we should be celebrating.  It helps us to feel as though we are doing more than floating through life.

And so, 10 years after starting my first dream list (based upon the book, “The Dream Manager”) with my Dream Coach, Krista Powers, I started anew this week.  To create this “Dream List,” you simply open an Excel File (I live my life in Excel) and set up categories for “Family, Spiritual, Professional, Financial, Community, Character, Physical, Intimacy, Intellectual, Travel and Things.”  Next, across the top, set up categories for “6 months, 5 years, Lifetime.”  Then you simply begin to fill goals and dreams into each category bucket.  The goal is to get to 100 dreams (or five goals in each bucket), then share that list with the several people you care about the most (they might fill in some dreams you missed).

When the list is complete, you narrow each bucket of dreams to the one truest desire and then assign a person in your life to be your accountability partner for that dream (to help you accomplish it). 

Fewer than 1% of us ever write down our goals, and fewer than 1% of those ever ask for an accountability partner.  Think how much we could accomplish if we all had a community to support usJ

So Andrew and I are working on our dream lists this week, and have so much to look forward to!