"Many people have the right aim in life, they just never get around to pulling the trigger. The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps -- we must step up the stairs."

– Adapted from Vance Havner

I have chosen this quote for this week's selection because of its ability to raise our awareness of the importance of acting on our dreams, goals, and visions. It has been my experience that many of us have the ability to envision what we want, and even to describe to others the value of following such a vision. What we seem to lack, however, is the willingness to make choices about what we do in a way that is congruent with what we want, and thus our actions leave us "wanting." In fact, we will almost always have very elaborate excuses or reasons why we have not followed our dreams, but the bottom line is that even though our aim was true, we have failed to pull the trigger, and thus have missed the mark.

While this in and of itself is unfortunate (because of the dreams never fulfilled and visions never brought to fruition), the result of a life created on settling and compromise has ramifications beyond just "missing the mark." You see, each choice (and even the decision not to choose is a choice) is like a brick or board that, intentionally or not, becomes the foundation and building material of our lives. If we consistently make substandard choices that are more about avoiding failure than achieving success, we will be constructing our lives of substandard material and the experience of living such a life will reflect the quality of the thinking on which it was built. Therefore, if you have decided that your experience of life is less than what you want, then maybe now is the time to refocus, re-aim, and make choices about what you do that are congruent with your dreams. Or, as this week's quote suggests, allow the venture to be informed by the vision, and courageously pull the trigger and/or step up the stairs.

I say "courageously" because I am well aware of the courage it will take to act upon one's vision or make choices in life that are congruent with your dreams. Many of us have been told (possibly by well-meaning adults who were trying to keep us safe from disappointment and/or attempting to rationalize their own failure to follow their dreams) to avoid dreaming or expecting too much because this view of life will only leave us disappointed and disillusioned.

Unfortunately, what is produced by following this philosophy is a life of "dis-illusion" where our illusions or dreams are guaranteed to fail because they are abandoned before they are given the chance to succeed. You see, I'm not advocating the philosophy of "anything you can dream you can do" as many of the "self-help" guru's today. I'm sure that we all have dreams that are just simply out of the realm of possibility. What I am suggesting, however, is that we will never know whether our aim is true unless we pull the trigger. We will never know whether the venture we were able to envision from the bottom of the stairs is possible until we are willing to stop staring up the steps, and start stepping up the stairs toward what we want. Then, even if when we get to the top of the stairs we find that the vision we thought we wanted isn't possible or is no longer desirable, we will be viewing life from a higher vantage point, and we will have grown in our ability to follow our dreams. From here we might be able to see things and imagine possibilities that were impossible to see when we were stuck at the bottom of the stairs.

Bottom line, the act of creating a life worth living isn't always about achieving our dreams, but more about the experience and learning acquired in the process of following them. For what we may discover is that just as the vista changes with each new mountain we climb, and each obstacle we overcome, so can our vision of ourselves change from a person "who had great ideas but never acted on them" to a person who became committed to the growth, learning, and ever-evolving perspective of one who was forever adjusting their aim and stepping up the stairs. As we commit ourselves to a life of climbing, and celebrate the knowledge and expanded vision that lay before us, we will be constructing our lives from the material of confidence versus questioning, love versus fear, and stepping forward versus stepping back. Here's to all of us having the courage to become such a person and embark on such a journey.

Take care and God bless, Dr. Bill