How to Design Your Dream Life Using Blue-Sky Thinking

When you think about your dream life five, ten, or even twenty-five years from now, what do you see?

What if I told you that you could design your dream life starting today? Would that change your outlook on the future?

Recently I was reading the book GOALS! by Brian Tracy and he touched on an exciting discovery made by Dr. Charles Garfield.

Garfield studied peak performers for more than 20 years, and he specifically analyzed men and women who had only achieved average results for many years but then suddenly achieved massive success in a very short amount of time.

In other words, they went zero to sixty real quick. When he sought the answer, he found that all of these individuals had begun using blue-sky thinking.

What is Blue-Sky Thinking?

Blue-sky thinking is the practice of looking forward into your future and imagining that all things are possible for you, that you have no limits to speak of, and that your life is perfect in every way. That’s hard to imagine, right? I know it is for me!

Maybe your dream life includes a loving spouse, a high-paying career, a beautiful home, and an expensive sports car in the garage. Perhaps in your dream life, you’re a real-estate tycoon who’s worth billions of dollars or a founder of a world-changing non profit.

It really doesn’t matter as long as you dream big. The sky is the limit!

Overcoming Challenges of Blue-Sky Thinking

The idea behind blue-sky thinking is that no dream is unreal or unobtainable. For blue-sky thinking to work, you need to remove all limits, including learned helplessness, self-limiting beliefs, and limits that have been placed on you by other people. That may sound simple in theory but can prove to be a challenge in practice.

You see, most people grow up learning what “normal” looks like, so they often accept what’s possible based on someone else’s definition of “normal,” but I’m here to tell you that only you can determine what’s possible for you.

So as you think through your dream life remember, this exercise is not grounded in reality, so there’s no need to make compromises or to settle for small goals. You should be thinking of ridiculous, outlandish, and seemingly impossible things for yourself.

If it helps, think through the different aspects of your life, including your professional career, finances, family, health and even your social life. What does each of these look like in your dream life?

Coming Back to Reality

Once you get into the exercise and you’ve managed to visualize your dream life fully, it’s time to come back to reality and think about what you would have to do going forward to make this dream a reality. Do not let doubt or fear creep in and kill your dream. Never underestimate your potential. Instead, break things down and analyze them, like so:

• Are you on the right career path or do you need to switch industries to get closer to your dream job?
• What kind of mindset does future-you have? Are you hanging around people with that kind of mindset today?
• What does your future spouse or partner look like? How does he or she behave? Where can you go to meet someone like that?

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea here. Nothing in life is impossible, even though it may seem impossible when you’re looking to jump from A to Z.
The concept behind blue-sky thinking is not to trick your mind into jumping from A to Z overnight; the idea is to remove all of the limits in your mind so that you can truly see what’s possible in life.

Then, you can take a step back and plan the steps to get there, going from A to B, and then on to C and D.

Related: How to Use the Domino Effect for a Momentum Driven New Year

Action is Everything!

Now that you’ve visualized your dream life and planned the steps to get there, it’s critical that you take action. Even the best plan in the world won’t work if you don’t take the first step. It may be scary at first, and you may have some doubts, but you’ll never truly know what you’re capable of unless you try.

Norman Vincent Peale once said “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” In other words, if you’re aiming for something, but don’t quite achieve it, you’ll still be somewhere better than where you started.

Earl Nightingale said:

“Success is really nothing more than the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. This means that any person who knows what they are doing and where they are going is a success. Any person with a goal towards which they are working is a successful person.”

If you want to be successful, think about your dream life every day. Write it in your planner, set your schedule around it, base your decisions on it, and pour all your energy and optimism into it.

The clearer you can be and the more you focus on the future you want, the more likely you are to achieve the success you’re striving for, but it all starts with the ability to think big – it starts with blue-sky thinking.

Related: Prioritize Like a Pro & Crush Your Goals in Record Time

Will you try Blue-Sky Thinking?

I’d love to know! Drop a comment below and if you’re brave, let us know what your dream life looks like.

Until next time, Take Care!