Introduction: The Start of a Dream Project

Ideas are beautiful in our heads: perfect, pristine, poignant. We can picture an amber glow coming in from the side window. This light illuminates the page where brilliant words will be written.  

What Halts the Dream Project

Then we sit down to work. It’s a stormy day, the words aren’t coming, and the beautiful idea in our head becomes a jumbled mess on the paper. Eventually to be crumpled up and tossed in the wastebasket. My wastebasket was full of these kinds of misstarts, and I viewed it as a failure. I would get frustrated and just walk away to do something else.

Fortunately, I realized this was a mistake. An idea in our heads is only that – an idea that we, and only we, can enjoy. Eventually, something stirs in us that says, “I must share my dream project with the world!” despite the obstacles, and potential shortcomings.

What Launched This Blog

Letting excitement overpower frustration is how this blog came to be. I have a love of learning that expands into every facet of life. Always a school nerd, I like to take notes from books, Podcasts, research journals, and even trash TV. I’ve found that you can learn from anywhere and apply that to build an ideal life. Then I consolidate the best practices into useable insights for my everyday life.

I have been thinking about sharing the lessons I have been learning for about a year – creating a blog focused around this central idea of personal development in multiple areas of life. However, I never started this dream project because of the above process. Frustration sets in when the perfect vision does not come to life on the page.

Leaving a “writing” session I picked up the book I was reading, The Book of Beautiful Questions by Warren Berger. In the book, there is a passage from novelist Ann Patchett who asks herself: “Am I Willing to Kill the Butterfly?”. Author Berger describes Ms. Patchett’s thought process below.

An idea for a new book begins to form in her head and it is “a thing of indescribable beauty.” She feels certain it will be the greatest book she, or anyone else, has ever written. All she need do “is put it down on paper and then everyone will see this beauty that I see.” And so, when finally she can no longer put off doing so, “I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region in my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it.” She doesn’t want to kill it, but it is the only way to bring to life an actual novel.

Warren Berger

This passage is what inspired me to finally create this blog. Will it be perfect like in my head? For now, of course not.

The Start of the Dream Project

But I know by starting we can build it to this vision. My goal is to provide value to you, the readers, and the community, from day one. With each post, there will be consolidated personal development lessons and insights from experts, researchers, and people’s personal experiences. This diverse cast will enable us to have takeaways that we can use in our own daily life.

Each post will contain concise, digestible information that is useful to you. There will be a key takeaway section at the end of each post, along with an action item. These action items are steps that can be taken right after reading the blog post to aid in building the ideal life that you want for yourself.

The goal of this blog is to create a resource that contains insight on how to achieve success in different areas of your life and create the life you want to live. Specifically, the blog will focus on:

• Ambition: Professional Development that leads to achieving life’s career goals
• Perspective: Mindsets that cultivate a resilient and positive outlook
• Well-Being: Practices that create a balanced physical, mental and emotional life
• Wealth: How to grow your money and time affluence
• Connection: Making, growing, and expanding your personal and professional relationships
• Reflection: Provides a quiet space to re-align your life

The vision for this blog will slowly come together with time. One post at a time. One lesson at a time.

Thank you for taking the time to start this personal development journey with me.

I am looking forward to helping you build the life you want.  

Main Take-Away:

It isn’t fun to take the beautiful dream project and kill it. However, it is a necessary first step to bring the vision into a beautiful reality.

Action item:

What dream project are you putting off because you are afraid to ruin it? How can you kill that butterfly today? Take ten minutes and write your idea on a piece of paper. Do the first step that makes this idea a reality, no matter how small that action may initially seem. Starting small is the first step to building that project!