MOORE: You need to use your imagination

How much imagination will you need? It depends on the dream, but you will need at least a little.

You can feed your imagination in many ways. In part, you can feed your imagination from years of specialized knowledge. Still, even with that knowledge, you may only have a vague idea of how to accomplish your dream. You may need to exercise your imagination to pinpoint precisely how you will achieve it, and the trail you will need to blaze to get there.

We’ve all seen a business offering a service and had an idea of how the service could improve. When you had that thought, you exercised your imagination. What if you expanded on that thought? What if you sat down and wrote how you could improve that service? What if you worked out the details so clearly, day in and day out, that you discovered exactly how to accomplish your dream?

Transforming your dream into reality will need a plan. To create your plan, you will need to use your imagination.

One of the most effective ways to imagine is to write your plan on paper.

In my life, I knew what I wanted to accomplish but didn’t know how to get there. One day I sat down to write, and I didn’t stop for two years. During the two years, I wrote a 178-page paper. Every night, I came home from work and wouldn’t sleep until I spent a couple of hours writing. What was I writing? A plan based on an idea.

I imagined the fine details of what my business would be. All the problems it would solve, the people it would help, all the services it would offer, and how I would integrate my dream with this business and use it to get where I wanted to go. I wrote over ten drafts of my paper, complete with charts, graphs, illustrations, facts, figures, ideas and detailed visions of what I planned to do. Every night while I wrote, I exercised my imagination.

Don’t be discouraged; you don’t have to spend two years writing a huge detailed paper to accomplish your dream. All dreams are different. You may only need to write your plan on one piece of paper. The more details you can add, the better. It will become more concrete with every word you write.

Some of the greatest innovators may have only written their plan on a chalkboard and meditated on their ideas daily until their imagination provided them with an exact solution or path they would need to take. Every dream requires a different amount of creativity and planning.

If you find yourself writing a detailed plan of action, know it’s well worth it. I didn’t intend to write something that would bring investment; originally, it was only a plan. This paper I wrote ended up being the reason I found my first investor.

Use your imagination and write down a plan to accomplish your dreams. Don’t rush yourself through the process; take your time. Inevitably your project will need to change a little. Every time it does, go back and refine it.

An idea, when combined with desire, faith, specialized knowledge and mixed with imagination, can bridge the gap to make your dream a reality.

Tune in to next week’s edition to find the fifth thing you’ll need to accomplish your dream.