1. Dream of a brighter tomorrow. Your yearning power is more important than your earning power.

2. Be rational. Mysticism is your mortal enemy. There are obvious, logical steps between here and your dreams. Write them down in bite-sized chunks and follow them like a route map.

3. Act. All is dust without action. Action is the key.

4. Be disciplined. Life is tough. Fight. Others want you to fail. Ignore them. The world is against you - go your own way. People will spout rubbish - ignore it.

5. Start today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Winners start right now. Losers chatter to themselves that they will start 'one day real soon.' It never happens.

Hierarchy of Needs

All dreams are driven by your needs. This might be your need for approval, recognition, status, safety, love, food, shelter - or any one of a hundred different needs.

So when thinking about your dreams, I want you to remember this concept called the hierarchy of needs - you might have come across this before. It goes like this.

When life is a desperate struggle, we are overwhelmingly consumed with the desire for food. Every waking moment is spent in pursuit of nourishment. Nothing else matters. We scrabble the earth from dawn until dusk with little on our mind apart from the thrill of discovering another root or berry. There is little time for philosophy or self fulfillment. We work, we sleep, we eat - if we're lucky.

Food is the first need, assuming we have basics such as air and water. If, due to man's ingenuity, we manage to crack the food supply problem, our next need becomes shelter and warmth - somewhere cozy to lay our heads at night. If we achieve all of these things, the next thing we seek is love and belongingness.

And after that? Recognition, self-esteem and the esteem of our peers.

This is a very important realization for you. It is very likely that you already have air, water, sufficient food, a roof over your head, a modest amount of money, and a certain amount of love and friendship. Therefore your dreams will almost certainly reflect your next need on the list which is your desire for recognition, self-esteem, admiration, respect, fame, achievement, etc.

If you want ten million dollars, then this is almost certainly because you want to be somebody and have the respect and admiration of society, not because you need a larger roof over your head or extra food.

As an interesting aside, the modern phenomenon of the serial killer coincides exactly with a period when, for the first time in history, most people have adequate food, shelter and warmth.

Next in the hierarchy of needs comes love, which we will assume is thwarted for some reason.

So the next higher need is recognition. Or, in the case of the criminal, notoriety. Most serial killers when caught and questioned, mentioned that one motivating factor was the desire to be somebody - a rare motive in crimes from previous centuries.

Paul John Knowles who embarked upon a random killing spree in 1972, claiming the lives of at least 24 victims, declared himself to be “the only successful member of my family” and positively basked in the media attention after his arrest. He was subsequently shot dead by an FBI agent whilst trying to grab a gun after a court appearance.

Recognizing your desire for adulation, fame, infamy - call it what you will - helps to clear your head and focus your mind more firmly on your goals. It can also help you to detect erroneous or incorrect dreams. Yes, there are such things as incorrect dreams. I would define this as a dream which is an overly complex or grandiose strategy for filling a simple need, when a far simpler (and more achievable) strategy might suffice.

Achieving a net worth of ten million dollars is actually a difficult task and one which will exercise you for the next ten or twenty years. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, if it is what you really desire. But if this dream is being driven by a craving for recognition, admiration or respect then there may be an easier way of satisfying your desires without going through the twenty years of grief required to amass ten million.

Perhaps you can get the recognition you crave in some other simpler way by writing a book, appearing on television, being a star in your local community or any one of a hundred easier ways. It's just something for you to think about.

Once you understand that it is our need for recognition, not money, which drives most people in an affluent Western society, you will be less puzzled by the things that are going on around you.

The rise in crime and delinquency is not caused by poverty, it is caused by tens of thousands of petty crooks wanting to ‘be somebody,’ or ‘teach society a lesson’ or to 'get respect' - they are, if you like, ego crimes not fiscal crimes.

A century ago most crime was survival crime. People stole to eat. Vandalism was almost unknown. A vandal leaves his or her mark on the furniture of society - it is a statement of ego.

The dramatic rise in divorce rate has little to do with people being worse husbands or wives these days, compared with the past. If anything, they are a lot better. It is driven by people's desire for recognition. They want to be appreciated. They are not prepared to suffer the drudgery of marriage without reward.

A century ago this would have been unthinkable. You got on with it because the survival of your family was at stake. Your precious thoughts of wanting appreciation were inconsequential in the scrabble for plain survival.

Look at advertising on television. Most products are sold on the basis of raising your self-esteem, not on the benefits of the product. Most adverts these days have the hidden message 'be somebody.'

So learn to look at your dreams with a critical eye. Ask yourself what the underlying need is behind the dream and then ask yourself if this is the only way you can achieve it.

Don't get fixated on the actual method or strategy of getting the need met; often there are many different ways of achieving satisfaction. First work out what the actual need is, and then plan the simplest, most realistic strategy for meeting it.

Many people struggle throughout their lives to make big money only to find that when they have got it, they still feel hollow and empty. This is because the money was just a symbol for the underlying need - which still hasn't been met.

A classic case would be a woman who sacrifices everything to reach the top of her profession and make a lot of money, only to realize that she has spent twenty years trying to gain her father's approval and love and this was the way she thought she could get it! What a hard route - and it didn't work! If only she had recognized the underlying need (for approval and love) and considered some alternative strategies, any one of which could have been far easier than the struggle she put herself through.

Stuart Goldsmith

© Stuart Goldsmith 2003

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