There is value in this dialogue. If I ask you – what is more fun – chasing your dreams or living them? What do you say? My answer – “I love living dreams but one need to chase them before living them.”

Big ideas first make an appearance in our dreams or thoughts. Then the chase begins. It makes sense to get out of chasing mode soon otherwise many of us will lose the interest in chasing and also the chance of living that dream. Here are some ideas that may help one do that.

Lock yourself in: Literally if it is possible. This will help avoid distractions and expectations. Distractions like possibility of engaging in mindless gossip, or spending an entire day running errands. Expectations come from friends and family about being with them and becoming part of their celebrations. No one should negate the importance of family and friends; but when the stakes are high – you need to make some sacrifices – only for a little while.

In such a situation tell your loved ones that you are taking time off to focus on some big goals and will be back soon. Those who really care will be ok with it. You need not worry about those who are not concerned about your goals. This will also include saying good bye to unwanted communication – online or offline.

You need to invest long chunks of uninterrupted time – to achieve something really big. You can accomplish this better in solitude. If you are working on building a start-up with friends, create a hub at home of one of your friends. Better if you all can live and work at same place.

This is why you see so many successful young entrepreneurs these days. These young entrepreneurs created successful enterprises living in a college dorm, few distractions and almost no expectations – a good mix for success. Facebook is the better known example but there are many. Y Combinator encourages the members of its famous Startup School to stay together. This also works for a group of students working on getting into a big school – say Harvard.

Around 5 years back, I wrote about starting and finishing a task successfully. That writing is more focused on completing a task with an extended timeline – something like writing a book, or seeing a startup through various phases – like launch, growth, consolidation etc. The current piece is more focused on activities like – building an application or a product; or launching a start-up or cracking a big examination. Still the earlier article should give you some worthwhile ideas.

Sweat it off: When working on something really big, you have some expectation from yourself. Such expectations are best avoided as it can get to your nerves. Spend some time out in the woods doing rigorous activity or just take a long walk. This will help you release nervous energy and keep you on track. In such moments you also get some interesting ideas. At least I do. Try it out and see how it works for you.

Live and breathe your dream: One of my seniors at school shared this during one of our regular midnight discussions – “Any idea that lives with you all your waking hours – will become a reality.” I totally believe it – when you are working on something big immerse yourself with the thought of accomplishing it. Before you set out to achieve it, read, interact and do your research and try to learn as much as you can. Being prepared makes sense.

Try to spend most of your time on pursuits you are after and you will accomplish it sooner than later. I have tried it successfully at least once. The success came later than I expected, in fact after I had stopped expecting. Still it worked.

Think on paper: We only have one head – sometimes it finds itself not capable of coping with everyday demands. This single head has – stuff to remember, plans to create, and memories to hold. With the help of this head, we need to hold on to ideas to make them becoming a reality.

If we can free the head of ideas, and things to remember we can give it more space to think, plan and execute. Head can be free if we think on paper – record any useful thought or idea as soon as it gets into your head. When you record – you get free from the hassle of remembering things.  You can also review the ideas you record and move ahead with the ones that you find useful. If you think about a great idea and then forget it – it is wasted time, energy and a possible loss of opportunity.

Focus on shipping: Your only focus should be to ship. Work to a timeline. If you think you can accomplish your goal in 40 days – work to finish it in 30 days. Ship and if possible take your product to market or at least to beta users. Improve as you go along.

Get a mentor: Find somebody who has done it before. Get them on board as advisor or mentor. This will help you stay grounded. You will also be saved of possible pitfalls and mistakes. It is good to be able to get up after falling. Still it is smarter to avoid falling to the extent possible. An experienced mentor can help you do that.

I am sure that you have a big dream that can use some of the ideas above.

Do you have a thought to share? What helped you to accomplish something significant? What is your big idea?

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Why can’t individuals do the same and improve? This case has been made earlier also. The idea now is to bring some structure to it. For some people a structured life is boring. But in places where you need to implement a plan it works wonders. Once you have established the basics you can let loose and go with the flow – coming back to check once in a while.

What I am suggesting is a daily, weekly, and monthly review. Annual review is also very important but calls for a separate article. Here we’ll just discuss daily, weekly and monthly reviews.

Many of us – get down to assessing our growth in mind once or twice a year – mostly at the times of major turning points in life – around job loss or marriage etc.

But if you commit yourself to doing regular daily, weekly and monthly reviews it will make a world of difference. You got to give it a try to experience the benefits. First do it for 30 days and later you can add month on month.

All right, now you have committed yourself to regular personal review. This is how you can actually do it.

First you need to set different parameters to base your growth on.

For daily review the parameters can be;

• Working on an important task every single day
• Helping those in need – knowledge, money
• Giving a gift to people you meet – smile is the best gift
• Avoid distraction (like endless emails and web surfing)
• Earning more than spending every day (monthly earnings can be averaged out to daily)
• Writing everyday

For daily review you can set aside 10 minutes every day. At the end of the day ask yourself did the day passed peacefully and as you wanted. Did you do something during the day from among your chosen parameters? Did you do all or some? What was ok, what was good, and what could have been done better? Finally before ending your work day just plan your first important activity for next day. It can be going for a morning walk with family. Write what is important for you.

Weekly review (30 minutes): Here you review you daily success with your chosen parameters and set the course right where any shortfall is experienced. On this day you can also update your chosen parameters.

Use the weekly review to take a broader look at your daily review. How many days you were able to do justice to the parameters. You can also note any new connections made; things like reconnecting with old friends; any new client connections that were made; weekly minimum numbers for exercise finished.

Monthly reviews (60 minutes): You review the impact of daily and weekly reviews on your monthly outcome as seen by yourself. The above listed daily parameters can correspond to monthly outcome in following way. This is just for your understanding.

So get set to get your daily dose of personal reviews. Hopefully this will turn out in a significant success in months and years to come.

Enjoy the journey on the path of life.

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You deserve a life of your dreams and acting often on your positive thoughts, correcting course and more action can take you closer to your dreams.

So what is your dream? A dream job, a dream girl or boy in your life, peace of mind, lots of money, becoming a published author or a successful entrepreneur. All this is possible when you take action.

Most of us in this world have a dream – big or small? But I wonder that many people go back to heavens without living their dreams.

When people talk about unfulfilled dreams they talk about destiny and lack of opportunity. But you know it is not true. The world is replete with inspiring success stories of people born in less opportune times than in 21^st century, who made a mark and lived their dreams while they were alive.

The best way to get closer to your dream is to convert your thoughts into action; and the best time to start action is now. Why? Because time is less; you are born with a limited supply of time and it is up to you to spend it wisely. It does not mean your life should only be work and no fun. That is not true. Along with sincere effort, time spent having fun is also a great investment in your own life. By indulging in fun activities, you tend to forget about not so good times and become more focused when you are in action mode.

What stops people from doing it right now? Fear of failure, laziness, procrastination, a haphazard life where a person seem to be occupied all the time with none left to act in the direction of your dreams. Those of you who are exploring ideas to get out this rut should explore – from 24×7 to 4×4.

When you align your life with a “just do it” attitude – good things happen. It applies to most of the areas of life.

• So if you want to write your first book. Write first paragraph today. You can think about the title later.
• Do not wait to tell you parents how much you love them. You want to tell other people in your life how much you appreciate their care and love.  Just do it. Do not know how to say it; write first and say it.
• Wanted to start your venture. Do it now. Moonlight if the need be. Start by booking a domain; it will motivate you further having done something about it.
• Want to get into Harvard or your favorite college; start by exploring their website. Other than browsing do some comparative research. Find out the success stories of people made it through.
• Thinking about telling your life-partner you love them then why wait till weekend – tell today.
• Want to lose some weight, make a plan right now. Sure you tried earlier; but you never know this may be your lucky day. Do not let failures of the past bog your down.
• Want to get into a new job or switch into a totally new career. Start today by making a list of your favorite companies to work with.

Now is the best time. There will be no better time. Just do it.

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I am sure you have some view point about this website. Either you think it is a valuable free personal development resource or you take it as a waste of your time. Probably, some of you are waiting, to see where it is headed. Rightly so, the content is very less at this point in time to create an opinion or view point.

But I am sure in coming months you will find interesting content in this space. Then, for some of you it may become an inspiration to start your own website. I will be happy to see that happening.

I see this website as a passage to future. A future where there will no crime, no hunger and everyone will live life to the fullest and live up to one’s true potential.

If you want to live life to the fullest, an understanding of relative nature of time will help. What is future in the current moment will become present tomorrow. Similarly, the very next moment, the current moment will become past. At the core is the moment we are living in. This moment some time back was future, now it is present, later it will be past.

So if you want to glorify your past or desire a shining future; focus on the current moment. Give your best to the present moment. If you are living present moment to the fullest i.e. you are giving your best to it; you are building the foundation of a great future.

For example, if you are trying to loose weight in order to become a model; sometime you will fancy yourself walking on the ramp. This will only happen if we you will focus on proper diet and exercise in the present moment.   

Rather complex introduction for simple facts that I am going to share with you. In the following lines you will find a review of the past month (July 2006) and plans for the current month (August 2006) in terms of my personal development goals.

This type of entry normally goes in my personal journal. Then, why I included it here? Probably, it can help some of you if you are contemplating similar pursuits. That said, such entries will be far and less between as I plan to write mostly timeless essays and articles here.

July 2006 was an exciting month for me where I tasted small success on many fronts.

Success

Website Launch: July was the lucky month when I was finally able to launch mohitpawar.com; a move which I had been contemplating for many months. The motivation behind this website is to give a vent to my thoughts, bring regularity to my writing and create a single window for all my current and future projects.

Fitness: I managed to stick to a fitness schedule for more than 30 days. I am still on it. Starting June 28, I started a morning fitness routine which includes basic warm-up, stretching and strength training. During past 40 days (June 28 to August 8), I went from 0 to 80 sit-ups. I further plan to add push-ups and chin-ups to this schedule in a phased manner.

Meanwhile, for cardio-vascular fitness I started walking regularly. Currently I am averaging at 5kms per day. Most of the days, I walk for 5-6kms; on some days I walk for 3kms with an occasional rest day. The maximum distance I have covered recently is 12kms.

This combination of cardio and strength training is doing a lot of good for me. I can feel the increase in energy levels which results in increased productivity at work.

Flip side is that it leaves me with less time for writing, reading and pursuing other interests; but I do not mind it because fitness is my top priority these days.

Restarting a regular exercise schedule is like homecoming to me.  As a kid, I used to run long distances. I used to get up really early then, mostly at 4 am or latest by 5 am depending on the weather. Soon after, I used to be out for a jog. Currently I am not focusing on getting up early. My current normal wake up time is 6:30 am.

Plans

During August, I plan to focus on improving my fitness level and writing skills. I also plan to be regular on reading front.

Fitness: I currently weigh around 97 kg. I want to reduce it to 91 kg till October 28, 2006. This suggests a reduction of 6kgs over a period of 3 months. It leaves me with a weight-reduction target of 2kg for August. I am sure of achieving it.

Reading: Some wise person has said if you want to write better, then you should read more than you write. I totally agree. That is why I plan to read following books during August.

1. Getting Things Done – David Allen (259 pages)
2. The Quick & Easy Way to Effective peaking – Dale Carnegie (221 pages)
3. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (136 pages)
4. Elements of Style – William Strunk., Jr. (40 pages)
5. The Tipping Point – Malcom Gladwell (272 pages)

In all 928 pages are to be read. I will have to finish reading these in 25 days if I want to be on target. It calls for average 38 pages per day. Given my current traveling schedule, I will have to read at least 65 pages on the days when I am not traveling to achieve it. Looks like, it can be done.

Writing: I communicate to you through my writing. I want this communication to be simple, something which you enjoy reading and which is capable to bringing value to your life. It needs to be practiced to be perfected. Hence, I will be writing 500 words on the days I am not traveling.

I will also like to share with you, my intention of writing 6 articles or long posts during August 2006.  

So now, I have shared all my plans with you and this leaves me with the responsibility of being on target. Hopefully I will be able to do so.

To know the results, we will have to wait till the first week of September 2006; that’s when I will post the review of August and plans for September.

Meanwhile, regular articles will follow.

Until next time, peace.