Turing Dreams into Reality

Standing Strong Podcast, Season 3, Episode 5. That's right, it keeps getting better. Welcome back to another episode. My name is Shannon. And I'm Little Shannon. That's right, the power couple with the same name back again at you talking about making dreams into reality, turning dreams into reality in today's episode. It's going to be fun, it's going to be awesome, it's going to be great. What do you have to say about that? I'm excited. This was something I struggled with for a long time even coming up with a dream. I didn't know how to dream. I'm very into reality, so turning something that's not real into something that's real and understanding how that works. I'm excited to talk about it.

Yeah, I was a dreamer. She was a dream crusher. That's what I used to call her forever and ever was a dream crusher because I would have a goal, a dream or something I wanted to turn into reality and she would be like, wait a second, let's just think about that real quick. I don't think you can do it. No, I don't think you can do it. It was, I didn't know how to dream. I didn't understand a dream and a goal and reality and that's what we're going to talk about today because I'm sure other people, especially adults, at some point, we're little, we quit dreaming. We hit an age where we say, okay, what is reality? We quit dreaming.

We quit having that goal for ourself or thinking we can do anything. We've talked about that in the past at what age we become comfortable and we give up on us and just start focusing on what the world says we should do. Yeah, that's right. You ask a kid what they want to do, they'll tell you to be an astronaut or what did Mackenzie say? A mermaid. She wanted to be, what was it? She wanted to be an inventor and a mermaid. Yeah, an inventor and a mermaid. That's awesome and everyone's like, yeah, that sounds awesome. You're going to be the best mermaid ever, Mackenzie, because she's a kid. Then as she gets older and older, people tell her, no, you can't. No, you're not smart enough.

No, you're not good enough. No, you're not good looking enough. No, you don't have a tail. You can't breathe underwater. Therefore, you can't. We start losing those dreams, especially when we become adults and we get into the mundane cycle of life where we go to work to get a paycheck to pay our bills to go to work to get a paycheck to pay our bills. We really forget all of those things that we wanted to accomplish and all of those things that we wanted to accomplish become unachievable in our own minds because of everything else we have going on in life. Well, I can't because I have a kid. I can't because I have bills to pay. I can't because I have a mortgage.

I can't because I can't because. And all of those things keep us grounded into the certain situation that we're in without hope of ever getting out of it unless you change your mindset. Because here's the thing about being a human, which is amazing, is we are smart little creatures. And we can achieve, we can do, and we can change our circumstances. What today is is not what tomorrow will be for better or for worse. If you're on top of the world, you're not always going to be on top of the world. Something that will happen that will bring you a notch down. Hopefully it's not extremely tragic, but there's ups and downs in life.

And we got to realize that if we're not where we're at right now, there is a way to change that right now in the future. So that's kind of what when it boils down to it, that's what a dream is for me. It is realizing where you are right now and seeing where you want to go in the future. However, a dream remains a dream without action, and we'll talk about that a little later. Yeah, so I'm big on like what do things mean. So I'm going to actually give you the definition of what we're talking about today. So what is a dream? It's a cherished aspiration, ambition, or idea that you have. So again, you know, you can dream about your lifestyle, what you wish it could be one day.

You know, when you're little, you dream about being a ballet dancer, baseball player, and all those things can be reality if you put in, like Shannon just said, it takes action to achieve those things. You can't just, you know, we struggled even with our son. You know, you want to be a baseball player. I want to be a baseball player. I want to be a baseball player. So we started playing baseball, and then, you know, you've got to work at it. You've got to learn. You've got to practice. And it was, oh, it's too much work. I don't want to do it. You know, and that's hard for someone like Shannon and I to watch a kid go, oh, it's too much work, where we, as kids, never had that mindset.

Like whatever we wanted to do, we did full force and never stopped to be the best at something. So for our own child to look at us in the face and be like, yeah, I just don't want to put all that into it. I'm not that good, you know. But those are him. Listen, our kids are injected with positivity throughout our house, but this world will just infect them. So someone on the outside said to him one day, you know, hey, bro, stick to the books. Okay, well, for me and Big Shannon, like that would have been fuel for the fire. Like, oh, yeah, well, I'm about to knock this ball out of the park, you know, or one day I will, you know, things like that.

And we would have worked really hard at it where that was enough to sit inside my son's head and go, all right, yeah, I'm going to stick to the books. I don't want to do this anymore. It's too much, you know. Right. One of my favorite quotes by Tim Tebow, he was a quarterback at the Gators and then went on to be a quarterback in the NFL and arguably one of the best underrated quarterbacks to ever play the game. But anyway, he has a quote, and I love it, and it says, hard work beats talent when talent does not work hard. So at the end of the day, a goal is just a dream without an action plan. So the process that you need to do is a dream is realizing what you want.

The dream is this is where I want to go. And then the next step is turning that into a goal. And a goal is nothing without action. So in terms of a goal, Shannon loves definitions, so she can kind of tell you how a goal is defined, and then I'll tell you how I look at goals. I'm going to back up just a little bit back to the dream because there are people like me. I stopped dreaming. Like I was that kid that was like, I'm going to, you know, go to college one day or I'm going to – I just – whatever dream I could make up was my dream. But I really didn't feel like I had any type of aspiration always to say, like, this is what I'm going to do with my life. I wasn't that type of person.

But then as time went on, it was like just what you said. I got in the rigmarole of I have bills to pay, I have to work. I was good at my job, you know, and I did it to the best of my ability, but I was a Monday through Friday worker and a partier through the weekend. I blew money. I didn't save. I didn't, you know, do any of those things. But I didn't know what I was doing. So it was just every day was a new day, and I was thankful for it, but I just kept, you know, chugging through the work life and, like I said, paying my bills, paying rent, paying electric, paying whatever, and then kids come along, you know, things like that.

But you have always been, as long as I can remember, a dreamer. You know, you were going to the NBA. You were going to, you know, own your own business one day. You were going to do this. You always had a dream of something better or bigger in your life. And for me, it was like I think like a lot of the world sees, like, to have those dreams become reality, you almost think, like, they have to have money and start with money, you know, from the get-go before you can be something. You know, it's kind of how it always was. You know, you had the Kennedys and, you know, all these big-name people. It was like, oh, of course they can do it because they have money.

You know, you can achieve all that stuff when it's just given to you, when reality is now that I know, being a business owner, you know, you can have all the money you want and you can blow it. But if you don't put that into action and do something with it, you know, you're going to eventually run out of it. So those people still applied themselves. They still worked hard to be in the positions that they were in. I just never saw that because it was like, oh, they just had everything handed to them. I've got to work for everything. But the problem was I was working for other people, not for myself. Right, and, you know, that's a perfect example of the blue-collar mindset that we grew up in.

I think it's a little bit different today, or maybe I just have a cell phone and an internet connection, you can literally change your life. That might have held some truth back in the day, but still didn't hold all of the truth. It took us a while to break out of that. One of the reasons it took me so long to get where I'm at now is because I had those blue-collar mentality mindsets pounded into my head for so long. When I did want to start a business, all my family mocked me and made fun of me and prayed for me because when I say all that, they wanted the best for me. However, like I said, they were born in that mentality, so that just wasn't the course that you take.

But it took me a while because I had to break through all of those limiting beliefs. However, I was fortunate that my mind has always been in the clouds and I knew I was going to do amazing things. It was just going to take me learning how to do all of those amazing things. Right, and so we'll move on into turning the dreams into goals. And that was another thing I really wasn't familiar with. I mean, I knew I wanted to achieve things. I always set a bar for myself, but I don't think I ever really did that until my adult life. But what are goals? It's an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envisions, plans, and commits to achieve.

So you start with that dream, you turn it into a goal. Right, and goals are a double-edged sword because studies have proven that if you tell someone your goal, that you get an endorphin hit that's good enough to convince yourself that you've done everything you need to do. So one of the things people always said was get accountability, tell everyone about your goal, they'll help keep you accountable, you'll be more likely to hit it, where studies have shown that's actually the exact opposite. When you tell everyone about your goal, you get such an endorphin rush, such a hit because everyone's patting you on the back, you're going to run a marathon? Oh, that's awesome. Good job. Keep it up.

Way to go. And you get that endorphin rush, and then you lack off the goal. However, what you need to do is find an accountability partner, one accountability partner that isn't going to pat you on the back and say, okay, well, let's see. I'm going to help keep you accountable. And when you talk to them, they say, hey, have you been on your running schedule? And if you say no, they're going to be like, well, how are you ever going to hit the marathon if you don't keep on your running schedule? So here's how you lay out your goals, and this is, you know, I didn't make this up myself.

I've heard this from many people like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, all those great self-help people from back in the day. So it's called SMART goals, and a SMART goal is an acronym for specific. You don't want to, I want to get better at running. I want to run a marathon in June 27th of 2019. It needs to be measurable, so you need to be able to measure that outcome. You don't want more money. You want $20,000 by, you know, three months from now. You can measure that in the bank, how much money, where are you at? It needs to be attainable.

So one thing that Shannon always kept me on check at was when I was working a job making $25,000 a year, or shoot, some jobs even less than that, my goal was a million dollars. I'm going to make a million dollars next year, and Shannon would be like, hey, slow your roll. You know, maybe you should think about making 50 before you go to a million. So it needs to be attainable, and that's one thing that I was lucky enough to have my wife for would reel me in because my goals generally would live in the delusion zone, as Michael Hyatt would call it, where it really wasn't attainable at that specific time. I needed to reach other milestones.

So if you weigh 400 pounds, your goal can't be to be 150 in three months. Your goal needs to be more attainable than that, if that makes sense. And then it needs to be relevant to where you are in your lifetime. I can't say I have a goal of traveling the world nine months out of the year with my wife next year because I have kids that are in school. So that's not relevant to the time period of life that I'm in. And then it needs to be time-based. So, like I said, with the specifics, not only that I want to run a marathon, but I want to run a marathon by June 15, 2000, whatever. So those are kind of the steps you take to lay out your goal.

Right, and those are very important, the acronym, just because, like I said, I didn't know how to make goals. We now make personal and business goals. So you have your personal goals, I have my personal goals, and then those personal goals are family-oriented. Anything I want on the personal level to achieve for that year, and then also for the business side. And then we take those, to me, a year is a long-term goal, and then we break it down into our quarters. So to achieve that long-term goal in our business, it might be a monetary amount. Let's say you want to earn $100,000 a year. So what does $100,000 a year in your business look like? How many clients at paying how much money?

How many of those new clients do you need monthly to keep that going? What is the service you're providing or the item you're selling? How many of those do you need to sell each month to attain that goal later? So those things are very important, and I didn't understand that because it was like, Shannon said, like, oh, I want to make a million dollars. Well, that's cool. That's a great dream. I mean, I think everybody wants to make a million dollars, but the people that make a million dollars, how do they get there?

So we have to look at the calendar and say, okay, out of the year span, this is how much time we actually do work on our business, and then this is what we're going to do to do this. And we've done that every year. We're in our fifth year of business, and I would say we did it one year. We decided that we weren't going, or we just overtook our time. Our time just took over. We didn't sit down and write out those business goals, and that year, I feel like, was our least amount of growth in our five-year period.

We still achieved, and we still did a lot of things, but we let the time even take over our goal setting that we were doing at the end of December for the following year, and I remember that one year. It was just kind of stagnant. Right. You're right. It was stagnant that year because we didn't do it. So my goal for so long back in the day was $100,000, so I know exactly what it is. $100,000 a year is $8,888 a month, and then I believe it's maybe it's $300, $338 or $538 a day, working day. Pretty much. I haven't had that goal in a while, so that math might be wrong, but that's how I broke it down.

If I want to make $100,000 a year, I need to make $8,888 a month, and in order to make $8,888 a month, I need to make this much per day that I work. Then we hit that goal, and then we moved on to the next goal, and the next goal, and the next goal, and the only difference is the mountain just keeps getting higher. We all think that once we hit the peak, we have a goal. Once I hit there, I'm going to be good. I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be excited, but the way the human brain works, you're like, all right, I'm here. There's the next one, and then you set out a game plan and action steps to get to there as well. So with what she was saying, dreams are nothing without an action.

Our goals are simply dreams when you have no action plan. So what she was talking about is we just created an action plan. I need this many customers in this amount of time, and that's going to get us where we want to go. But to get those amount of customers, these are the actions that we need to take in order to ensure that we get to where we're going. The most important thing about achieving a goal is not the big things. It's the small things. The things you do on a daily basis, those small, insignificant habits, are going to be the ones that either make or break your goal.

In business and branding, if I'm not branding my business each and every day, it could be as easy as an Instagram story or a post on Instagram. Or in weight loss, it can be whether or not I counted my macros or I did not count my macros those days. It's those habits that are going to make or break it. So that's where the focus then needs to be drilled down to after you have everything set up, you have an action plan of where you need to go. The focus needs to be on your daily habits and then recapping and reviewing what is going on.

So if you have a goal to lose 20 pounds in 90 days, if you're not at the number you need to be in 30 days, you know you need to revise so that you can revise to get there next month. And then if you're not where you need to be, you need to revise Actually, before my son was born, I ordered my dream Mustang. Four days after I ordered it, my wife held up a pregnancy stick and was like, I'm pregnant. So we canceled that order. We ended up with an Explorer. So after my son was born, I had a Mustang, not the one that I ordered, but a Mustang I already had. We got rid of that Mustang, and I haven't had another Mustang in 11 years.

My goal this year finally was, one of my goals this year was, trade in my car, get a Mustang. I got the Mustang. And I'm super proud of myself and excited for that goal to be completed. But guess what? My goal has now changed. It's not a goal for this year, but it's another longer-term goal. It's still a goal in the car realm, but next is a Jaguar for my wife. So it's one of those things where once you achieve something, in order to keep yourself going, oh, there's a good quote over here. Let's talk about that quote right now. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. Don't jump yet. All right, I'm not going to jump. So for me, I literally set a goal to run a half marathon. I was like, I can do this.

And I did a training. I mean, I did really good. I did a training program, and I wasn't a runner to start with, but I wanted to achieve something. I had had a baby, and I didn't go back to work. And any mom that's gone through that, you kind of struggle with, I need something for me. So my sister-in-law decides, we're going to do this half marathon. Let's do it together, and we'll be accountable. I'll send you the training program. We'll do it. And I'm like, sweet. So we started the training program, and we had like six months to train for this half marathon. So we had enough time. I would get up every morning, and I would run without fail. I mean, it was really good.

And then my sister-in-law, that was probably in like March, and then come June, halfway through the training, she's like, oh, I'm pregnant. Can't run on a half marathon. I'm done training. And I was like, what? Like, no, I can't stop now. Like, I've already set the goal. Like, no matter what, I'm going to drive to the other coast where she lives. I'm going to do this, even by myself. Like, I'm going to achieve it. And I did. And it was really awesome. I mean, it was hard. It was really hard. And I really wish. She called me halfway, not halfway, 10 miles in. No, I had three miles left, and my body was done for. She called me on the phone.

I'm waiting for her at the finish line, and my phone rings. I'm like, oh, it's my wife. I'm like, hello. And she's crying. I can't do it. Well, and this is a reality check, is I had this goal, and the training program literally took me up to 10 miles. I had to finish the last three on my own. So for those 10 miles, I was going along good, but my body was, like, done. Like, I didn't have an extra three weeks to train for that extra three miles. So in my mind, my body, I mean, my body really was given out. And for me, once I stop running, I can't get back into it. Anyway, so I finished that race. I don't run since. But it was, like, an achievable goal. I'm proud of myself. It's off the list.

Like, I ran a half marathon. And people will ask me all the time, like, well, why don't you do it again? So you finish those last three miles. Like, change your time goal. And I'm like, I don't want to. Like, I set that goal. I achieved it. I don't want to go any further. I think five miles might be my limit now. Like, I can run and not be like, what did I get myself into to that distance? But, you know, sometimes there are goals you're going to do, and you achieve them, and you're like, cool. There's people that do those half marathons. They're like, all right, now on to a full marathon. They are crazy. Right. Well, and Michael Hyatt talks about this.

It's called, you know, being in your desire zone. And if you do something that's not in your desire zone, you're not going to be willing to continue with it. So it's one of those things. She's not a runner. However, here's the difference is, yeah, she did not set another goal to run a marathon. However, what she did set a goal to do was to get up five days a week and go to boot camp with her best friend. And she has been pretty darn consistent on that. So it's one of those things. Like I said, it never stopped. She didn't do the half marathon and say, okay, cookies and donuts from now on. I probably did for a little bit. Right. It was just a different kind of goal. Yeah.

So, I mean, those things happen too. But on to the quote you were talking about. Yeah, so Shannon found a quote by Dale Carnegie, which Dale Carnegie is one of the influencers, first influencers in the personal development niche. And it says this, inaction breeds doubt and fear, action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. Dale Carnegie. And, you know, that goes back to without action, you have nothing. And most people, you've probably heard this, suffer from analysis paralysis, where they just sit and analyze. Well, I'm going to run, but in order to run, I need to get me some shoes.

They go get some shoes, and I need some socks. And then they get some socks, and, well, I need some chafing cream. And here's going to be my refuels. Here's going to be my water. And then if I start my program on this day, the sun will be out, and there's going to be no precipitation for three weeks. I'll be able to get a good start. And then they analyze it to death, and they sit and do nothing but look at how they're going to do it. So it doesn't matter if you plan, if you strategize, if you talk, if you think. If you do not do, you will not achieve.

And I think to help with that, too, is there needs to be the reward at the end of your goal, whether it's something that you're going to reward yourself with. Or, like, for me, I just reset, like, oh, I'm going to start running again. I only want to run five miles, but I'm going to get running again. And I did, like, a mile and a half. I think I got up to two miles. And then I just don't have the time to spend like I did before in the morning running. Excuses. No, plus, no, let's don't go there. Plus, I'm getting up for boot camp, so that stress on my body as well. I would have to give up a day of doing that. I don't desire to do that more. Or I desire to do that more than running.

So running has kind of taken that back seat. But for when I was training for that half marathon, the goal at the end, you know what I mean? Like, I paid for an event. And I had to go. I'd already paid for it. So I had to train for it or I wasn't going to be able to finish it. You know, if you're setting that goal, what is the reward at the end? I have goals for myself, and the reward might be the accomplishment and what that's going to bring. That's fine. But there's an end in sight of, you know, whether it's the goal weight and what you're going to do when you hit that point. Is it buying the new bathing suit or, you know, whatever?

But I think it doesn't even have to cost you money, but there needs to be some type of accomplishment at the end of that goal. Otherwise, what's the point? So at the end of the day, here's the deal. Inaction breeds a lack of confidence. And in my case, depression. Everyone knows that if, well, everyone that's listened to this podcast or knows me knows that I have struggled with depression and anxiety in my life. I still have a very real struggle with anxiety. But at the end of the day, if I'm not doing, I spiral down the rabbit hole. So after a vacation, we got back, and I just really wasn't feeling my right mind. And I'm like, you know what?

I think I'm in a little bit of a depression, you know, valley here. I'm going to do something to get myself out of it. And what did I do to get myself out of that depression? What action did I take? You know? You started journaling? Well, I did start journaling again. But what is my goal right now as we speak? Learning to type. Oh, sorry. So I'm like, I need to do something. I need to challenge myself and figure something out that I don't know. And it needed to be something that I could figure out relatively quickly and get that endorphin boost. So I set a goal of learning how to properly type. I've always been a hunt-and-peck typist where I'd look at the keyboard and type.

I said, you know what? I'm going to learn where to put my fingers and be able to look at the screen and type. I'm two and a And so to me, it was like, that wasn't even like a relevant goal, but to you it is. So while she was talking about that, I just typed without looking at the keyboard and it says, lit is my goal. And I meant for it to say, it is my goal, but I did it without looking at the keyboard. So good for me. Yeah. All right. So if you don't know how to type and you want to learn to type, leave us a comment, say type squad. Yeah. So you have to put your dreams into, first you have to dream. You have to put your dreams into action and you have to get out of your comfort zone.

And when it gets tough, it just means you're getting close. Don't quit. Yeah, that's right. The hardest part is there at the end. I'm sure you've seen the meme online where a guy's digging for gold and you see the gold at the end of the tunnel and he's literally just a few strokes away from it with the shovel and he's turned around walking away. But here comes another guy with a pickaxe getting ready to break through and finally hit that goal. It's those last few months, that last few pounds, that last few dollars that are going to be the toughest. And it's when it's the toughest that you need to be the most steadfast in your goal and where you're going. If it's working.

I'm not saying blindly chase a goal that is causing you to lose your livelihood, but you need to keep pushing on. And it was funny, I was talking to someone who invented something and invented it 12 years ago. Still has not taken off, however, is in the process of being huge. And the way I said it was kind of an insult and then I had to backtrack and I was like, you're a perfect example of why people don't succeed. You're a perfect example of why people don't succeed. And I was like, wait a second, that's not what I meant. You're a perfect example of what people that don't succeed need to do. And it's patience. He never gave up, he kept persevering, he kept going.

And now his little dream that everyone thought he was crazy about is truly about to explode. I'm talking Shark Tank type explode. Anyway, so keep with it, never stop, keep going. Because if you stop, you'll never achieve it. That's it. All right, thanks, have a fantastic day. And as always, hopefully we'll see you on the beaches of the world. That's right, baby. If every day is a new day, then everything's going your way. But you want to make it last forever, we'll keep it together, cause it keeps getting better.