What did you want to be when you were a kid? Do you remember? 

Whether it was to be a professional basketball player like Jake or a garbage man like Danny (he liked that they got to ride on the truck), we all had a dream. 

As we get older, we tend to fantasize less about the future. It can be hard to dream about becoming a ping pong world champion when you have to focus on paying all your bills on time. 

This is something we have been practicing at Blue Door for the past few months. Not ping-pong (we still haven’t set up our table after five months), but realizing our dreams.

Through a variety of writing and visualization exercises, we’ve challenged ourselves to look past our immediate obligations. We’ll try to come up with ‘stretch goals’ that we’ve never really considered before as a way to expand our perception of what is achievable. 

The cool thing is, these exercises actually work. 

Danny’s new stretch goal is to travel to every National Park in the country, something he had never really considered before. 

Jake dreams of becoming the best listener he can be, which inspired him to take up meditation.

If we had never asked ourselves those questions, we wouldn’t have realized these dreams. 

There is also some brain science to back up the idea of ‘dreaming big.’ 

It’s called the Endowment Effect, and it is a label for the way people ascribe more value to things merely because they own them.

It works with ideas as well. If you realize a dream and commit to it, your brain is ‘owning it.’ This mechanism provides some fantastic motivation, but it only works if you are committed to an idea. 

Once you have something you are excited about, you can take steps towards making it happen. 

For Jake, that means meditating every day and sharpening his focus. For Danny, it means planning trips to the National Parks closest to him (for now 😉).

These small habits bring you closer to your dreams and they are the best way to change your life and bring you closer to where you want to be.