The Recipe to Transform Your Dreams Into Reality

Originally published on Entrepreneur on November 10 2015, By Adam Toren

There is a secret recipe that entrepreneurs who are living their dreams already know. How is it possible that some get to live the life of their choosing while others are left to wonder what their dream life would feel like? Are a select few born with the talent, the inheritance or the charisma to achieve their dreams while the rest must take life as it is? Not at all. The truth is there is a secret formula, a tried and true recipe that entrepreneurs who live their dreams know that you can learn.
Here are the four simple secret ingredients to transform your dreams into reality so you can live the life you’ve always desired.
1. Belief
This is reiterated over and over again but that’s because belief is of paramount importance. You must believe you are capable of achieving what you set out to accomplish. You have to also believe you are worthy and capable of making your dreams reality. Before the achievement of every dream there was first a seed of belief.
Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself. — Oprah Winfrey
The entrepreneurs who are living their dreams didn’t put a ceiling on what they could believe or achieve.
2. Discipline
Belief is a beautiful thing. It’s the blueprint from which you will construct your dreams. However, the foundation you’re going to build your dreams on will be the discipline of relentless hard work and the discipline to act every day toward your dreams.
The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand. — Football hall of famer Vince Lombardi
That’s the formula for winning in the game of sports and in life. You have to have the discipline to take action if you want to live your dreams.
Nick Woodman, founder of GoPro, shared the importance of this drive and discipline as he created his now legendary camera company saying, “To get GoPro started, I moved back in with my parents and went to work seven days a week, 20 hours a day. I wrote off my personal life to make headway on it.”
You have to be willing to put in the work and the discipline to achieve your dreams. It doesn’t happen without belief, but it also won’t happen on beliefs alone — you need discipline.
3. Vision
Vision is crucial to your dreams.
Daniel Elk, founder of Spotify said, “We led with our conviction rather than rational, because rational said it was impossible.”
Related: 10 Shifts in Perspective Necessary to Succeed as an Entrepreneur
You have to have the vision to stand by your dreams, to want them despite the naysayers and to inspire those around you to help build your vision, too. Vision also means having the ability to adapt and be flexible with the way your dreams are unfolding. It’s the ability to keep going confidently in the direction of what you want during the slumps, lulls, hardships and ambiguity that will undoubtedly lie along your entrepreneurial path.
Success comes down to hard work plus passion, over time. If you work really, really hard over a long period of time, it will pay off.
— Stanley Tang, founder of eMillions
Vision is staying in the game, staying motivated and sticking to your dream.
4. Acknowledgment
Successful entrepreneurs will tell you that a life of your dreams is marked by many successes and surreal moments that happened along the way to where they are today. You never really “get there,” you constantly keep moving toward your ever-evolving dream. That’s why taking moments to acknowledge how far you’ve come is so important along the way to your dreams, because dreams have a funny way of becoming moving targets.
The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch. — Jim Rohn
Be the envied by following this recipe to living your dreams.