Harvey Mackay Column for the week of May 18, 2009 The Best Dreams Happen with Your Eyes Wide Open Print Forums Refer Page

A class of college seniors filed into a room for their final exam. The professor announced that she had divided the questions into three categories and explained that students were to choose only one of the categories. The first category of questions was the most difficult and worth 50 points. The second set was somewhat easier and worth 40 points. The third group, the easiest, was worth 30 points. The professor graded the papers as follows: the students who chose to answer questions in the hardest category were given As. Students who chose category two were given Bs, and those settling for the easiest were given Cs. Naturally, some of the students were frustrated with the professor's grading. The professor simply explained: "I wasn't testing your knowledge. I was testing your aim."

That's why it's important to aim high ... to have dreams that inspire you to go beyond your limits. Show me someone who doesn't dream about the future and I'll show you someone who doesn't know where he or she is going.

David McClelland, a Harvard psychologist, has studied high achievers extensively. He has concluded that successful people possess one common characteristic: They fantasize and dream incessantly about how to achieve their goals.

"We grow great by dreams," said U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. "All great people are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through the bad days until they bring them to the sunshine and light that comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true."

"Dreams, not desperation, move organizations to the highest levels of performance," wrote Robert Waterman Jr. in his book, "The Renewal Factor." "Our dream ought to be institutions that work for, not against, our needs. That is the hope, the power, the dream, and the challenge in renewal."

Indecision can destroy your dreams, if you allow it. Dr. Suess, the famous author of children's books, identified this common workplace malady in "Oh, The Places You'll Go." He takes the reader on a journey along beautiful streets and into wide open fields under clear blue skies. Then there's a crossroads and confusion.

Suddenly, we're in what he calls "The Waiting Place"—a place where people just wait because they can't make up their minds or because they are afraid of change.

The late Erma Bombeck, beloved author and columnist, said: "A devotion to excellence, detail, and quality can create a legend to make dreams come true. There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, 'Yes, I've got dreams, of course, I've got dreams.'

"Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look at it, and yep, they're still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, 'How good or how bad am I?' That's where courage comes in."

Erma Bombeck certainly fulfilled her dreams. As a housewife, her dream was to write about her experiences of raising three children in Dayton, Ohio. Her problem was convincing the overwhelmingly male power structure that ran the Dayton Journal Herald that what she had to say might be of interest to their readers. She researched where the paper's editors lived and discovered it was a suburban community with a small weekly paper. So she took a job writing a column for that paper. Soon the Journal Herald editors' wives became big fans of her work and persuaded their high-powered husbands to run her column in that newspaper. Within two years, Erma Bombeck was in syndication across the country.

I often joke that it takes years to become an overnight success. But it starts with a dream. My dream was to own a factory. I wasn't even sure what kind of product I'd make, or exactly where it would be. But I pictured myself walking the factory floor, talking to workers. The pile of broken-down machines I bought might have looked more like a nightmare at the time. But dreams come true—with a lot of wide-awake work.

Mackay's Moral: If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.

The Author Harvey Mackay is a nationally syndicated columnist for United Feature Syndicate. His weekly articles appear in 52 newspapers around the country, including the Chicago Sun Times, Rocky Mountain News, Orange County Register, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Arizona Republic. http://www.mackay.com/ Copyright, Harvey Mackay. All rights reserved.