How To Chase Your Dreams With a Family (Part 4)

When was the last time your family went on vacation? A few months ago my family and I went on vacation to a little town called Wisconsin Dells. The city is small but it’s packed with water parks, amusement parks and everything a kid would love.

While there the kids went nuts, my wife tanned and I got to work on some projects related to my dream, it was lovely.

I was sitting there, sipping on some sweet, cool iced tea thinking this is what it’s all about. At night when we were in the hotel, I updated the family on where our dream was at (noticed I said our) and got some advice from time.

It was a time to refresh, relax and get recharged to tackle the rest of this year. While there, I realized two crucial points related to chasing your dreams with your family:

Schedule down time

It’s our natural tendency to want to keep going until we drop, when we’re chasing a dream it can be even worse.

This goes back to the patience thing we talked about in the last post, we want to be living out this dream now. If you keep going without having any down time, you’re going to burn out.

Even in the process of not wasting time, truly living and chasing those dreams, that down time can be the difference between success and failure. When you push too hard you can start to resent your dream or see it as the object of your pain.

This is especially true when you’re chasing your dream with a family. If you guys just keep going without taking time off to do things that are fun and exciting, your family will resent that dream.

I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir but it was a lesson that I had to teach myself. That time away can give you a clearer perspective, it can refresh you and give you the energy you need to push those last few miles.

Down time can be a time to bond with your family and just enjoy that moment, a moment you’ll never get back. Down time is an important part of the dream chasers journey, if you haven’t taken any down time in a while, schedule something today.

Set goals, not expectations

There’s a huge difference between goals and expectations, I wrote about this very subject for my mentor, Dan Miller.

A goal is something we work towards, it has specific measurements and a date. An expectation is something we want to happen and when it doesn’t, we’re crushed.

Setting expectations instead of goals has been the downfall of many dream chasers and has even broken up families. As you chase a dream as a family, sit down and guide your family through some realistic goals.

Talk through why you think that measurement should be set there and talk about the best ways to hit those goals.

When you have clear goals, you can focus on what is important right now, not what rabbit hole you want to explore. It gives you a clear sense of direction and eliminates the wrong path.

Take an action step

When I started writing this series, I envisioned writing it for someone like I used to be. Someone who is chasing a dream but doesn’t have a bunch of disposable income, plus has a day job and the craziness of life.

If that’s you, the idea of scheduling down time is crazy. You have a dream to make a reality and don’t have time to waste. I know how you feel, I’ve been there but trust me, schedule some time off. Even if it’s just a day, do it!

If you’re already on this journey, set some goals and make sure you’re not confusing them with expectations.

When was the last time you had down time? Have you been disappointed because you had certain expectations?