Can you dream big?

Yesterday I wrote about thanking your support team, those special people who do things for us athletes that we take for granted. Today's post is bringing the dream inside you alive.

Yesterday I was talking to a trainer at my gym who is getting back into running. She said she is only jogging right now and we started a conversation about my recent races and training, like running up 'A' Mountain on the ASU campus. Another person in the group asked, "What's the difference between running and jogging, I mean do you just run full out all the time or slow down at all?" I responded from an old advertisement I remembered from a magazine, "The only difference between a runner and jogger is a blank entry form."

It got a few laughs but in thinking about the whole conversation later I realized that really the difference between a jogger and a runner (or triathlete) is being dedicated to the dream. Pastor Tommy Barnett says, "If someone holds onto a dream for five years it will become a reality, but most can't hold onto a dream for five minutes."

My point is not that it takes five years to train for a race but it can take a year, or several months and several thousand minutes of training. It always, no matter what, comes down to having an iron will. Many people would like to do a half ironman or run a marathon or just run a 5k, yet with all the desire and dreaming that goes into that thought it is gone by the next time their offered dessert or a night out with the gang, or simply given the mental task of getting out of a warm bed an hour early.

So I want all of you reading this to think about your dream 'thing' for a minute, that 'thing' that more than anything you want to do. Now ask yourself these two questions;

1. Is it bigger than you? Us puny humans love to put constraints on our abiilties, if your goal or dream is bigger than you, it comes from God and he wanted us to be the biggest dreamers of them all. We just like to muck it up with pyscho-babble and victimization. When its big, it takes all your effort plus some of His to accomplish.

2. Can you let it go? Dreams are illusive, they can get away from you and thats when doubter's begin to eat away at your resolve. Conversely, when you start to become successful in your dream (losing weight but eat salads instead of burgers, making more money but work more hours), your success changes you and you rise up from those around you. The doubter's will try to pull you back, looking for ways to pull you down. The herd mentality is afraid of success because success is not common, this is the point where people mock you or tempt you. If you can hold on to that dream and keep it in your focus than you will overcome the obstacles and reach your dream. If you can't shake the fact that you missed a training session and have to make it up before you go to bed or double up the next day, you can't let it go.

Someone else said that, if you can do something for 21 days it will become a habit, for good or bad. Good advise. Cutting out bad food, increasing your training in small increments, getting support from your family (buy in from your spouse, honestly if you need buy in from someone you date, you need to think better of yourself) and maybe a coach or trainer and before you know it your hooked into your 'Dream Matrix.' My terminology thank you very much, for being plugged into your new reality, not the false world of Common Man Syndrome.

Do you think you have a dream bigger than yourself? Are you commited to it, regardless of friends you lose or obstacle you confront? Of the changes that you create in yourself? Are you prepared to be successful? Do you get? Now go do it!