Dreamcrafting

The authors head up the Achieve Group, a successful training franchise that helps guide international corporate clients through planning and implementing change and improvement. They use a nut-and-bolts approach to teach others to develop what they call the “macroskills” necessary to make dreams come true. They tell us that it’s not always the most talented people who achieve their highest aspirations but the most driven, and most of us have resigned ourselves to never realizing our dreams because the necessities of life get in the way. The basic skills required can be learned, and the authors give many examples of those who realized their dreams despite great odds, such as Walt Disney, Jane Goodall, and Charles Lindbergh. Although the five dream-crafting disciplines that they outline, such as aspiration and motivation, are more inherent in some people than in others, this guide should be an asset for those who dare to dream big but haven’t got a clue how to move from dream to reality. David Siegfried

We traditionally think of success as the product of three main factors: talent, skill, and ambition. (Some might like to throw blind luck into the stew as a fourth ingredient, but for now we’ll leave it out of the recipe; more about luck in chapter 4.) In this traditional view, talent represents innate ability, the natural aptitude an individual either does or does not possess. Talent can be developed, but most would agree it cannot be acquired if it’s not there to begin with. What can be acquired is skill. Both the musically gifted child and the tin-eared youngster can master the mechanics of “keyboardcraft”—of reading notes on a page and translating them into specific keys played by specific fingers on a piano. If both these kids entertain the dream of becoming a professional musician some day, does it necessarily follow that the one with the greater talent is bound to have an easier time making this dream come true? Many would instinctively answer that it does, that this is a given. But think of all the supremely talented musicians you have encountered in your own experience who have never managed to break into the “big time” despite years of trying, and all the “big names” whose level of basic musicianship is not really all that impressive. If talent and skill are not the big issues, then what’s left?

Assuming that any musician with a dream of making it big has enough basic talent and music-making skill to “squeak by,” it is probably those with the most ambition to succeed that have the best chance of doing so. Cultivating within themselves this ambition, this fierce motivational drive to achieve their goal despite any and all obstacles—this is one of the key dreamcrafting macroskills. It applies to any big dream, including, but not limited to, dreams of triumph in the realm of music.

Does a skill at this higher level imply a higher level of difficulty as well? Wouldn’t it follow that these powerful disciplines must be much more difficult to master and apply than those connected with the everyday (micro-level) skills we’ve had to master all our lives? The surprising answer is “not at all.” In many ways, learning to operate a computer, for example, is more challenging than learning to maintain our resolve or win the support of those around us; and yet many who thought themselves incapable of it have learned to use computers effectively…