LIFE. NOW. Overcome the ten obstacles that derail your dreams: Fear: It takes on many shapes and forms, and can sometimes creep into our lives in subtle ways. Maybe you are afraid of making sacrifices in order to pursue your dreams, or maybe you are deathly afraid you will fail if you get out there and try. If we don't learn to handle fear correctly we will never get beyond the first step. The Approval of Others: We all crave it. Those of us who claim we don't are liars. Because of this we tend to stick with people we are comfortable with, or who we have known for a long time. If they aren't willing to support us in our dream we abandon it. As a result we become "secure" by being part of a group even if that group is seemingly going nowhere. The Comforts of Home: By nature most people are not risk takers. We like to be comfortable. And home—wherever that may be—is usually one of the most comforting places we know. Perhaps you still have the benefit of living under your parents' roof rent free, or you attend the same church with the same friends you have spent your whole life knowing. Things like these aren't easy to leave. But if you have a dream that requires venturing out, these are things you will have to part with to some degree—but think of it this way, there is a new home just waiting to offer you its comforts somewhere out there. A Normal and Average Life: Normal is a relative word, we'll give you that. But average is something that can be pretty easily defined. It means we are just like everyone else around us. We do what's expected—what's been done before, what others are doing. And chances are, in doing this we are selling ourselves short. In all honesty none of us want to be remembered for being average; we want to be remembered for being excellent. But you have to abandon average to get to excellent. A Sense of Control: Come on now, who doesn't like to be in control? Although many times the sense of control that we do have is really false, we still like to believe in the idea that we are in charge of what happens to us and that we are in control of what is going on in our lives. Even if our dreams are absent, and our lives are less than we desire them to be, we want to claim that we allowed it to happen, and that we didn't really want to pursue our dreams anyway. Knowledge of Where to Start: Having the knowledge of where to start when it comes to getting from where you are to where you want to go can be tough—especially if your dream is big. That's why breaking your dream down into smaller, and easier to reach goals, is important. Just like stepping stones, these small goals will ultimately lead you all the way to living out your dream. The Money to Make it Happen: Life takes money, and many times a lot of it. Chances are, if you are in your twenties you just don't have it. Thanks to student loans, credit cards and automobiles and our dependency on them, twenty-somethings have now been dubbed "Generation Debt." But even with bank accounts hovering just above zero, and interest rates that are soaring through our roofs, we can get a handle on our finances and make progress toward being able to fund the things we desperately want to see happen in our lives. The Motivation to Do It: There is something risky about pursuing our dreams. We might fall on our faces, or go broke (if it is possible to get more broke than we already are), or we might succeed—and sometimes that is the scariest thing of all since it would change absolutely everything. Many times it can be difficult to actually get motivated to step up and give the lives we desperately want to live a try, and it can be even harder to stay motivated if our dreams don't come together all at once. The Vision to Follow Through: Making it all the way from where we are to where we want to go is not going to happen overnight. Sometimes it takes more work than we realized when we started, other times we have to go through long periods of failure and discouragement before achieving success. Quitting is easy. It's continuing on that is tough. That's why having a vision of what life will look like on the other side of your dream is absolutely vital. A Knowledge of How Your Dream Fits Into God's Will for You: Many times we try to write our dreams off as a crazy notion or a child's silly musings. But chances are the dream you hold dearest— the one you just cannot seem to shake — is more than that. It very well could be God's will for your life. If you don't take a chance, an absolute risk, and get out there and live it out the world will be at a loss. More often than not, our dreams are part of God's plan and it's just a matter of letting Him put the pieces together and show us how they fit. Read an excerpt. Buy Life.Now. from Amazon.com Check out the radio interview Shannon and Michael did with "Mornings with Lorri and Friends" On Sirus radio! LIFE. NOW. Bethany House, March 2007, ISBN: 978-0764203145