by Lotta Alsén, Ladies Who Launch member, Los Angeles

illustration by Barbara Hranilovich

Making dreams a reality often feels far away—you want something, but how do you make it happen? I’ve learned, both in realizing my own dreams and being a conduit for others realizing theirs, that there is, in fact, a recipe. I’ve distilled what continues to prove itself over and over, and what can help you realize any dream on your horizon.

But first, here are a few of the dreams that have come true for me:

Here are the steps I used and continue to utilize in building all dreams, big and small …

1. Vision. We need a vision to make things happen. What we can’t see we can’t create. Yet, on the other hand, whatever we visualize will probably not happen. Not in that way. Our information is too limited for us to be able to see the bigger picture, but we still need to visualize the next level in order to get there. It’s almost like we need to pretend to see before we really can see, and without the pretending we won’t get to the real thing.

2. Courage. We need tons of courage to make our dreams come true. Because most of the time the journey toward our dreams will really suck! Sorry for being so blunt, but the road to freedom was never supposed to be easy, and in reality we never would want it any other way, just as any maker of computer games knows. If we could breeze through level after level, we would tire of the game immediately. So there is a logic to the struggle. While following the path we will be asked to take leaps of courage without knowing if we will land safely. To let go of the things that hold us back, without knowing if something or someone will replace that emptiness. To be lost, without knowing if we actually will find a way back. There are no guarantees, life is not safe! But in the end, courage always pays off because it expands our horizons and makes us into better human beings.

3. Stamina. In order to realize our dreams, we need to be very committed, and know that our journey will last a lot longer than we could have imagined. And it will take much more energy than we would like it to take. And for this we need staying power. Even if the only thing left for us to do is claw forward with bloody knuckles, we still can’t give up on ourselves and our dreams. We are much too important for that.

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