What is a dream? A dream is defined as something you want; something that has heart and meaning to you and something that you believe could come true.  Having dreams will make you a more passionate person allowing you to expand your vision and thinking. A dream is never too big or too small, the only question that really should matter is simple; what matters to you, and what are you willing to do about it?

Dream exercise

• Close your eyes for a minute. I want you to image the following statements; do not respond to them, just image how each statement would make you feel.
• I want you to imagine how you would feel if you were completely debt free.
• Imagine that you had $1000 in your unplanned event fund bank account.
• Imagine you had a savings account with 6 months living expenses saved.
• Imagine paying cash for all your purchases.
• Now think about how your relationships would change if you were debt free?
• How would your health improve?
• Imagine having saved up and being able to pay cash for your dream vacation.
• Imagine having a plan in place for your child’s college education.
• Imagine that you are prepared for life after retirement.
• How does this make you feel?
• Are you calm and relaxed?
• Can you imagine a life where you no longer have financial fear, stress or worry?

Now ask them to open their eyes.  Ask them how they feel after doing the exercise? The goal is for them to hold onto that feeling and keep moving forward and making this exercise their reality not just a dream.

Living Vision

In the Living Vision you are writing a narrative about what you see as your future. Writing in a narrative or story form really helps to engage the person’s possibilities for the future. I recommend writing 2-3 pages in vivid language.

• Writing a Living Vision Financial Story
• Now that you’ve creating an Ideal Financial Scene, the next exercise is designed to help you activate these scenes.
• Think of the living vision as something that you intend to realize over the course of the next 1, 2, 5 or more years. This process should take at least 30 minutes and be done when you are in a quiet place, relaxed and ready to envision how you would see yourself being in the future as it relates to your financial strength.
• We are encouraging you to stretch your imagination a bit. You’re going to write a story of sorts about you and your life as it can be without financial stress, having the things that are deeply important to you and giving more meaning to how you are actually using your money.
• In this story, the only rule is to make it at least 50% believable that you could achieve this and make your vision a reality. There may be a natural tendency to doubt yourself and create a narrow vision of what’s possible. Try to take the brakes off of your visionary thinking. Imagine that you are able to find creative ways around roadblocks and that in this vision
  you’ve actually achieved these dreams.
• If you take the time to write your new living vision of finance you will probably experience a fresh sense of hope and believe in yourself.
• To help get you started, here’s a very brief example of how one might be written.  Try to write at least three pages of how your life IS in a few years from now with greater financial strength and the things are you doing that matter most.
• Sample Living Vision Financial Statement. (Brief – yours should be at least three pages that have depth and fully describe how your life might be in 1,2 or 5 years)