By: Matt Franks
How many of you growing up can remember someone saying the words, "Get real would you?" Normally it was directed to try and belittle your ambitions of what you wanted to do in your life. In other words, “bring you back to reality.” Dreams by their very nature are birthed out of possibility, hope, and desire. They are fused together by out of the box thinking and imaginations. However, for many high achievers, "Getting Real" is just what they needed to hear on their success journey.
Consistently applying an unrealistic outlook to your dream only compounds the realistic price the dream requires you to pay. Dreams are hard to achieve, but become almost impossible if you fail to face reality. Orrin Woodward has said many times, "Leaders need to deal in reality." Dealing in reality simply means not allowing the deep desire of achieving a goal emotionally blind us from what logically needs changed. If you truly desire to achieve the dreams for your life then you will need to "Get real." So what separates a dream from a fantasy? The answer is very simple: one requires reality and the other doesn't. In fact, Rudy Ruettiger said, "Reality is the enemy of fantasies, but not of dreams."
A plan for the future based on an unrealistic view of the present will always lead to disaster. The more I talk to people the more I discover many of them try and function without confronting what needs confronted. When you purposely fail to confront reality you end up taking one step backwards for every one step you take forward. The sum total of that journey leads to zero results.
So how do you confront reality? William Arthur Ward once said, “The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, and the realist adjusts the sails.” Here are four ways to confront reality on your dream journey:
- Manage your emotions – Orrin Woodward has said many times, “You can tell the size of the person by the size of the things that make them angry.” Confronting reality takes a high level of emotional intelligence. We live in a world that measures IQ, but dreams are decided by EQ (Emotional Quotient).
- Accept who you are – In order for one to increase their value, they have to first accept their value. Have you ever heard, “be comfortable in your own skin”? Facing reality is reserved only for the self confident. There are few things as detrimental to progress than the effect insecurities have. You have to be able to look into the mirror before you can ever expect to look up to the things you desire.
- Look at your results – When I played football in college each game was played for one reason – to outscore the opponent. When momentum wasn’t in our favor then we had to make adjustments or adapt our game plan to give us the desired results. It is true that in today’s modern day culture it is unpopular to separate the winners from the losers. However, life isn’t as soft skinned as today’s status quo. To change the scoreboard of your life then you are going to have to look at what has worked and what hasn’t. It is the difference between working and winning. Leaders observe their results so they can win.
- Seek the truth – Remember in the blockbuster movie, A Few Good Men, when Jack Nicholson echoed his famous line, “You can’t handle the truth!”? On our success journey it is necessary that we seek the truth about our current situations. Although it is uneasy, not learning the truth carries with it a lifetime of bondage attached to the same issues. When seeking the truth, I have discovered one undeniable fact: each impactful lesson I needed to learn the most, always happened to be the one I wanted to be revealed the least.
