5 Steps to Changing the World

A lot of people out there in the world today have dreams of making it big and changing the world. Yet most of them think to themselves “I’m only just one person. People wouldn’t listen to me. There’s no way I could change the world.” and their dream dies then and there. But the point is that history is full of individuals like you and me who HAVE made a difference simply by standing out from the crowd. So this week I thought I’d share 5 steps on how you can make a big impact around you and change the world.

When you think about it there is nothing special about the people involved in shaping our history. They weren’t genetically engineered to be great people. It’s something they found embedded deep inside themselves and they fueled that something with enough passion to ignite it into a raging fire which lead them to success.

Step 1 - Have a Dream

You can call it a dream a vision or whatever but you need to have one. It could be something massive like “I want to eradicate poverty in Africa” or something smaller like “I want to take my family on holiday”. Whatever it is you need to have it.

Step 2 - Be VERY clear on what your Dream is

Life has a way of throwing it’s little problems up at you and you need to be very clear on what your Dream is so that you can turn view these problems as challenges and then overcome them. Write down your Dream and make sure you review it as often as possible as this will help you make the right choices when you are faced with a decision. And there’s going to be tonnes of them along the way if you choose to chase your dreams.

Step 3 - Share your Dream with the people you trust

You need to share your Dream with people you trust. I stress the part “people you trust” because there are a lot of people out there who don’t have a Dream and as a result they subconsciously sabotage other people’s dreams.  There’s two main reasons why you need to share your dream with others. 1.They will continue to remind you about it in various ways (I always have my friends ask me if I’ve bought my M6 yet!) and 2. They might know someone else who could help you achieve your dreams (this helped me put together my technology training initiatives deal). If your dream or vision is big enough, they might actually want to help you achieve it too. Remember though, share it ONLY with the people you trust.

Step 4 - Break down your Dream into a list of goals

This is where a lot of people fail because they get all excited and pumped up about their dream and then when they try to achieve it and hit obstacles, they haven’t planned for it and BANG their Dream goes out the window because they think its too hard all of a sudden. Break down your dream into a list of goals, then spend time working out what the obstacles are in order to achieve that particular goal. Then you need to work out how to overcome those obstacles, you don’t need to have concrete ideas on how to overcome each obstacle but you should have a general idea.

Step 5 - Buzz like crazy through your goals to turn your dreams into reality

If you’ve completed all of the other four steps correctly then step five will come relatively easy for you as long as you have the self discipline to keep doing it. Knock off your goals one by one and you will start to feel as though your dream is possible and achievable until one day you knock off your last goal and you realise that your Dream is now reality.

So let’s run through these steps using my Technology Training Initiatives as an example:

Step 1 - Have a Dream

For a very long time I wanted to build a training centre that would specifically teach small business owners on how to use technology to improve their business. Not just learn word or excel but really focus on how you could use software and hardware to overcome business challenges like marketing, sales, human resources etc etc.

Step 2 - Be VERY clear on what your Dream is

I put together a proposal using dummy photos to make my dream more realistic, so that anyone picking up a copy of the proposal would actually “see” it being a reality too.

Step 3 - Share your Dream with the people you trust

I showed my proposal around to a few people who instantly asked me if the building already existed (because I’d done such a great job with the photos) and my response was “well it could with your help…”

Step 4 - Break down your Dream into a list of goals

I worked out that I needed to get certain people on board for the project so I made a list of people including organisations, government departments and industry associations that I would need buy-in from.

Step 5 - Buzz like crazy through your goals to turn your dreams into reality

One by one I contacted them and got their support and then went about putting together my submission and in January 2009 we got news that we’d won the grant to put it all together. It took a few more months of dealing with logistics and criticisms, but finally on the 25th of May 2009, my dream of teaching small business owners about technology turned into reality. Here’s the story.

And that is the magic formula that all the greats have used time and time again to Change the World. Having said that, there are a couple of things you need to keep in mind if you want to change the world like them:

1. You are only human. You will face setbacks. You will face problems. You will face a whole load of people who do not want to see you achieve your Dream. The sooner you recognise this fact the sooner you can deal with it and get on with achieving your Dream.

2. Changing the world doesn’t need to be a big thing. It could be something huge as eradicating poverty in Africa, or something little like making someone who is crying smile again. You can’t really compare the impact of the two but when you think about it, they are both “World Changing” activities, except “the world” is a different size. For the person who is crying, you have made an impact on them. For that one person you have changed their world and made a difference. Every time I speak in public I keep this in mind.

3. When you finally achieve your dream and prove to yourself that it can be done, celebrate big, celebrate hard and reflect over your journey. If you had to do it all again, what would you have done differently? It’s these lessons that will help you move forward into achieving your next dream.

So this week I challenge you to come up with one idea on how you would change the world. Remember it doesn’t have to be big. If you don’t believe it’s possible then pick something small and run through the 5 steps and see how it works for you. Whatever you do, do it with passion and don’t let anyone take that dream away from you.

I’m going to leave you with one final quote from Anita Roddick who founded The Body Shop:

“If you think you are too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

Author: AJ Kulatunga

Category:

dream inspire achieve success goal setting