We All Have Dreams

Winning has everything to do with what you believe. The second you believe you can, it gets put into motion and winning begins. That belief, that decision, is powerful. It's the spark that ignites.

This is your time at the beginning of a new year. You are free.

You are free to dream. And this is a beautiful time for reflection.

What would make you stupendously happy in 2023? What would be absolutely "impossible" but totally wonderful if it happened?  What about your dreams in every area of your life, not just work? Dream it! And let your imagination and your dreams fly.

Forget "reality" and imagine life as you want it, not as it is. Who cares if it's impossible if it makes you supremely happy? Forget "possible" and go for happy! 

Dream it rich. Dream it bold. Dream in color. Dream in all its dimensions.

Dream and dream and dream. Imagine, imagine and imagine.

Dream until you can't stop smiling. Don't stop a moment before.

Martin Luther King had a dream and he told us what it was in his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, 1963, even though it did not go down as planned.

King’s advisor and speechwriter, Clarence Jones, drafted a full speech for King to deliver, based on, he recalled, a “summary of ideas we had talked about.”

The first few minutes of King’s speech follow the script. Video shows him constantly looking down at his notes, reading verbatim. “Go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.”

Just then, around halfway through the speech, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson – who was standing to King’s left, maybe 10 feet away – shouts out, “Tell ‘em about the dream Martin! Tell ‘em about the dream!”

Jones recalls: “[King] looks over at her in real time, then he takes the text of the written speech and he slides it to the left side of the lectern. He grabs the lectern and looks out on more than 250,000 people.”

There’s then a six-second pause before King looks up at the sky and says:

I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

The rest was history.

Jones says: “That portion of the speech, which is most celebrated in this country and around the world, is not the speech that he planned to give.”

The best story – not the most prepared, or the most thought out, or the most analytical – wins.

Dream your dreams. Just make a list today, you can change them anytime.