Defend Your Dream: 8 Things You Can Do Now To Live Without Limits

Ronda Rousey has had to defend her dream
numerous times. She has overcome tragedy
and stayed focused and persistent.

Don't you love that rush you get when you cook up a potentially life-changing idea? I'm talking about those visions we craft for ourselves. We call them "dreams." Our dream career, our dream mate, our dream vacation, our dream home, our dream lifestyle.

We want them so much, and for good reason; because they're awesome. So why are we talking about how to defend your dream?

Here's why: You start to work on it. You may even tell the people close to you about your dream and that you're "going for it."

You make a step in the right direction. A little progress. Then a little more. "This is fun! I'll be there in no time," you say to yourself.

Then you hit your first obstacle. You can hear the brakes slam. This is where most people drop off. A small percentage will power through this first wall of crap, make a few more stumbling steps of what appears to be progress, and then another whack. Blind-sided.

Now things look bleak, impossible even, for the remaining dreamers. Maybe this idea can't happen after all.

Guess how many are left, bruised and battered, but still willing to reassess, pivot, figure this darn thing out, and keep going.

One percent.

I'm a big fan of these One Percenters. I study them. Here are 8 things I've learned that they do to defend their dreams and live without limits.

Defend Your Dream

1. Make time every day to defend your dream, even if your workday requires you to work on someone else's. After work, before work, on your lunch break, on your days off, do something to move your football down the field and closer to the end zone. Even a small bit of earned momentum every day works wonders. And watch out for your e-mail inbox. Someone wise once said that your e-mail inbox is nothing more than someone else's To-Do List neatly served up electronically to YOU. Yikes. Accurate, when you think about it.
2. Life can sometimes get you down. Be human. Let it. But another thing we humans can do is get over it, at least enough to keep moving forward. That is an absolute human truth. History has logged over a billion stories of people who have survived sad tragedies. I lived next to a married couple who endured a Nazi concentration camp. Their parents and siblings were killed but they were freed by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. They started a family of their own when they emigrated to America. That's triumph.  One of my grandmothers watched her little sister die in a fire when she was a child. But she grew up, got married, and had kids of her own. I wouldn't be here if she didn't. My other grandmother's first child died when he was 5. She went on to have 7 more kids, 20 grandkids, and a big loving family. Thank goodness she did not fold up and give up when her son passed away. Those are just three stories I can relate in a matter of seconds from people close to me. I'm sure you can come up with your own too. When you need some perspective, and we all do at times, Google these names: Kyle Carpenter, Brendan Marrocco, Jessica Cox, and Isaac Lufkin. You can defend your dream regardless of the set-back.
3. Manage stress by following a routine. Routines give us stability and comfort. They give us some degree of control in our life. Eric Barker and Tim Ferriss swear by the power that routine gives them in their daily quest to manage stress and remain productive. Make it a part of your daily routine to defend your dream.
4. When you brace for impact, you sometimes, I'll even go so far as to say "often," build up stress and anxiety levels that are unwarranted. Remember to live in the present. You can handle challenges as they come, if they come. Don't waste energy clinching up and expecting them.
5. Don't quit. Just don't. I watched four people survive a grueling black belt test, and I think the single most important thing that made them successful in earning that coveted belt was not quitting.
6. A quick biological trick to put your mind into a positive state: Make a mental list of things for which you are grateful. It takes 5 minutes and can pick you up out of depression thanks to the chemicals and hormones that will wash through your brain as a result. It's a physical process and it does not fail.
7. Show up. Activity fuels more activity. Laziness fuels more laziness. Showing up is everything. When your motivation is low, step one is to put your face in the place.
8. Embrace "the suck" like Alexander the Great did. They didn't call him "The Great" for nothing. The guy knew how to make it happen. One of the earliest lessons he taught himself was how to take control of a situation. That's a Commander. Even at 11 years old, he took command of his life by turning a brutal chore, swimming across an icy river at dawn, (the first ice bucket challenge??), and made it his own. He stopped his tutor from forcing him to make the swim by doing it willingly. That is self-command, and there is nothing more powerful.

If you have a dream, the world will challenge you to defend your dream. Will you stand and fight?