How to Find Your Dream: Part 1

This article is an excerpt from the book “You Have a Dream: how to figure out what the heck to do with your life”, written by Jacob Hansen, one of the original Lionheart founders, at the age of eighteen. You can get the full book at Jacobmhansen.com.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. “

Mark Twain

Rain halfheartedly drizzled down on the green and tan world around me.

I stared at a distant mountain, faintly visible through the misty clouds. I furrowed my brow and clenched my jaw, deep in thought.

I will find you.

I pulled the military surplus wool blanket tighter around my shoulders, so as to shelter the notebook protectively clutched to my chest against the moisture. My soaked running shoes sloshed as I resumed my methodical pacing through the knee-high grass.

I was on a critical quest this spring day, one that had begun three months previous. Though I did not recognize it at the time, this quest would change my life, and the lives of thousands of others, forever.

At this moment, the peak of my epic quest was me drifting through a field in the middle of nowhere, probably looking like a homeless person. I stared at the pebbles and plants passing beneath me, mentally prying away at my big question.

For the first decade and a half of my life, I hadn’t concerned myself much with the future. I had a fairly average childhood and looked forward each year to the next round of school and social opportunity. While I eagerly awaited what the future would bring, I figured I had plenty of time to worry about big life decisions later.

That changed shortly after my fifteenth birthday. I had a rather rude wake-up call when all of the sudden, every relative, friend and neighborhood dog started asking me what I was going to do with my life—that’s how it felt anyways. At first, I gave halfhearted, bland answers like “I’m thinking about going into law,” or “I’m interested in studying math.” I ditched this approach after the first few weeks, because to be honest, it sucked.

“I have no idea!” Became my confident, go-to answer.

As my parents began to wisely counsel me to create a plan for the next few years, I couldn’t help but admit that all these people were right to be asking me big questions about my future. As I well knew, success is something to prepare for. If I wanted to get somewhere in life, I needed to figure out where I wanted to go in the first place!

If the inquiries of others weren’t pressure enough for me to figure out what to do with my life, I had another, even greater awakening: this was my life, and I wanted to be successful! Though relatively young, I considered myself more than capable of taking action, learning, and doing incredible things—now that my ambition had woken up, I felt like a race car idling at an intersection, not sure which way to turn. I was ready to make something of myself, and that meant that I needed a direction to head in.

All of the sudden, my “I’ll figure it out later” view of the future, failed me. And thus began my quest to figure out what the heck to do with my life.

Almost everyone will have to face this quest at least once in their lives, but there was one special trait that would turn my need to figure out my future, into a life-changing quest. This trait is also the reason I ended up in that rainy field. As I listened to other people talk about their lives, and as I looked at the opportunities around me, I saw a stereotypical path that looked something like this:

Graduate high school. Slave through college for another 4-6 years, maybe longer. Get a job that you kind of like. Look forward to weekends, holidays, and vacations. Work for 40 years. Retire, and go on more vacations. Eventually, die.

The prospect of living my life like that didn’t jive with me. Like, not at all. I wanted my life to be awesome, and the stereotypical path wasn’t going to cut it for me. That’s when I began thinking about a mysterious phrase I had often heard people throw around:

“Follow your dreams.”

What that phrase actually meant, I hadn’t the foggiest idea. People say it, but they rarely tell you what a dream is, and almost never tell you how you’re supposed to follow them. But despite not having any idea what that phrase was supposed to mean in practical application, I heard it promise something special—it hinted at a life that deviated from the stereotype in the best way possible. A dream sounded like something that would require my life to be passionate and fulfilling, maybe even adventurous.

At this point, I chose to take a big risk: as I set out to figure out where to take my life, I decided that I wasn’t going to focus on what everyone else was doing, or what seemed “safe” and expected. Instead, I was going to become a dreamer! Because maybe, this whole idea of “Follow your dreams,” would enable me to set my course for a truly incredible life.

If dreams truly existed, I was going to find one.

After three months of dedicated study, the help of mentors, and the deepest reflection of my life, this quest had led me to a field in the middle of nowhere. I had armed myself with a list of critical questions and was determined to answer them once and for all. My watch told me I had already been wandering for almost two hours. It was beautifully quiet. I was alone. The rain drizzled on.

I will find you. I mentally spoke to the elusive answers.

I climbed on a fallen log, and began to pace back and forward, racking my brain.

“What do I want in life?” I asked.

“Where should I go?”

“What should I do?”

At the core of them all, was the question “What is my dream?”

Two hours turned into three as I thought of greatest men and women in history: I wanted to be like them, but I also wanted to be me. I wanted greatness, I wanted to matter to the world, and I wanted to be a good man too. I wanted to love my life!

I thought about what I loved doing, about what I was good at, and about what big difference I wanted to make in the world. Rain trickled down my face, and I stared up at the afternoon clouds, light illuminating sporadic patches.

Wait a minute. I stopped pacing. There’s something…

Like a ray of sunshine, an idea softly began to reveal in my mind. I suddenly became extremely excited—I hadn’t discovered a road map, but I HAD found a vague destination! If I was right, I had caught the first glimpse of my dream!

I made a bold declaration that day. Before I was thirty years old, I would become two things: an internationally renowned speaker and writer, and an independently wealthy business owner. Why these two things? Because in the first case, I believe that truth has the power to change lives in every way, and I wanted to spread life-changing truth to as many people as possible. I also knew that if I was going to have maximum impact, I would need the freedom teach people without the financial and time constraints of a “normal” job. Not only that, but I’ve been a natural entrepreneur ever since my first lemonade stand, and I find it extremely fun. Hence, the business declaration.

Heedless of the rain, I launched myself off the log and jogged towards civilization. This new vision for my life was audacious and daring. It sounded like the most enjoyable challenge I had ever heard of! A fire burned in my soul, and I knew that my life would never be the same.

~~~

That evening, I eagerly met up with a mentor and small group of fellow students. We were meeting for a perfectly timed discussion about the projects we were going to work on over the next year. My peers had also been searching for a vision of where they wanted to take their lives, and the atmosphere was electric! We settled down around a dining room table for a discussion that would stretch late into the night. I remember feeling that anything was possible. My future was a clean slate, and now that I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like, I could get down to constructing my masterpiece. I scooted my chair in close and grabbed a pen.

“Where is my…” I had misplaced my notebook in my enthusiasm. Dang it.

Not to be deterred, I swiped a nearby napkin. It wasn’t a Mona-Lisa level canvas for sure, but at a time of inspiration like this, I didn’t care. To this day, that napkin remains one of my personal treasures.

As the meeting progressed, and as we shared our visions for the lives we wanted to live and the next steps we thought we should take, my thought process went something like this:

Okay Jacob, so you want to be a respected speaker and writer, correct?

Precisely.

Then you’re going to have to have a great education and lots of credibility so people will want to listen to you.

Excellent point, brain. I guess I need to go to a good college. I wrote that down.

And you know that a classroom isn’t going to give you all the speaking experience you need to get really good at influencing others.

Brilliant point! I’ll seek out some real-world opportunities to hone my speaking skills. I wrote that down too.

Most entrepreneurs fail multiple times before hitting a homerun, so what if you started one right away and thereby get a ton of experience?

Where have you been all this time? Again, I made a scribbled note on the napkin.

By the time we were done with our conversation, I had taken my bold declarations for the future, and created a plan to work towards entrance to the most difficult admission-level college in my state, master the art of oratory, and start my first business. This is me at fifteen, mind you. Don’t worry, I thought I was crazy too.

Over the course of the next year, I would actually achieve all three of those goals! I was admitted to BYU two months after my sixteenth birthday, I won first place for my oratory skills at a speech and debate competition that pulled students from districts all over northern Utah, and I created Big Idea Children’s Books, L.L.C. (That business didn’t last long, but we did publish a book, sell and distribute it, and start production on a sequel).

When year two rolled around, I reevaluated my dream, found my next steps, and created a new plan. By the end of that year, I had been employed as a BYU faculty member and TA who got to sit down and coach first-year writing students on their papers. I had spent three weeks living in Japan on my own dime. A friend and I had created and grown a teen-to-teen idea hub, through which we published a few dozen self-help and inspirational articles and videos. Perhaps most importantly, this was in this year that I woke up to my dream on a significantly greater scale (more on this later).

As I write this book, I’m looking back over year three. This last year has been by far the best yet, in which I’ve dreamed up and led a movement among youth towards obliterating limitations and living a life of freedom, purpose, and service to others (known as the Lionheart movement). I’ve impacted thousands of people through this movement by becoming a nationally known youth speaker and mentor. I published my first book. I built my first profitable business, alongside the Lionheart movement, by camping out full time in my basement for six months with two of my best friends. I also became a national cabaret champion (a form of dance that combines ballroom with acrobatics) and ran two marathons. 

I’m not telling you these things to brag about my list of accomplishments or pretend like my life is perfect. Honestly, there are a lot of people out there with similar and greater achievements, and I believe that your resume says very little about the quality of a person you are. My success has required me to face massive amounts of stress and discouragement, and I’ve made mistakes just like everyone else.

 What I am showing you is that I have found my dream, and the pursuit of it has changed everything for me. Since the day I captured my first real glimpse of my dream, I’ve been living a whirlwind of opportunity, monumental challenges, victory, and straight-up-awesome-sauce! I am moving towards the fulfillment of my dream faster than I thought possible, and every day it becomes more clear and more compelling. I absolutely LOVE my life, even throughout my most difficult, depressing, and disappointing days, for this reason: I know exactly where I need to be—that knowledge is among the sweetest life has to offer, and I would not trade it for the world.

As I write this, I am 18 years old. I’m a professional speaker, entrepreneur, mentor, student, dancer, and all-around passionate dreamer. I’m a warrior, a champion for the heroes around me, and messenger of truth and light. I’m about to spend the next two years of my life off on a new adventure in Russia, teaching people, serving people, and taking my dream to a whole new level.

I’ve lived the last few years of my life in a radically different fashion than most people ever experience. The single greatest reason why, is this: I have a dream.

So too, you have a dream.

~~~

Are you, like I was, at a big decision point in your life? Do you need to find your next steps? Are you wondering what the heck you’re supposed to do with your life?

Maybe you’re not sure what path to take in high school. Maybe you’re in your senior year, stressed out to the max because you don’t know what college to attend. Maybe you’re in college, dragging around an “undecided” major. Maybe you’re about to jump into a career but worry about the idea of staying there for a few decades. Maybe you’re stuck without motivation because the things in your life aren’t exciting to you. Maybe you’re overwhelmingly busy, but you feel that in the midst of running around from commitment to commitment, you’re missing something adventurous and meaningful.

If any of the above has struck a chord with you (or even described your life to a tee), then you’re in the right place! I completely understand the pain of feeling at a loss for passionate direction in life. My good news for you, is that your future is completely yours to shape as you wish. The one thing that you’re missing, is your dream.

And that’s exactly what this book is here to help you discover.

I invite you to step away from the hamster wheel of asking where you should go to college, what you should major in, or what job you should get. Because if you don’t know where you ultimately want to end up, it doesn’t matter what path you take to get there. Before you get to any of those detailed questions, ask yourself what your dream is. The beauty of this shift of focus is that once you nail your dream, the rest of your answers will fall into place with relative ease.

Not only do you find direction for your life when you discover your dream, but it also sets you on FIRE (metaphorically speaking, of course)! Life becomes a grand and epic adventure when you’re following your dream. Your work begins to really, really matter. Great challenges propel you towards unprecedented levels of learning and personal growth. You discover a thrill sweeter and more enduring than any adrenaline-pumping sport. In the proper time, extraordinary achievement shows up as icing on the cake.

I’ve devoted a large portion of my life to coaching people on finding their dreams, virtually since the day I found mine. As I’ve studied and taught about this subject, I’ve come to understand three ideas that I believe, if lived, will change your life forever. I’ve written this book upon these three ideas, and as you read, you’ll learn exactly how to live them. These ideas are worth taking note of:

1. You have a dream that is priceless to the world and powerfully unique to you.

2. You will find your greatest fulfillment, growth, and adventure in the pursuit of your dream.

3. You don’t have to wait—you can begin to live your dream today.

My journey began because I knew that I had a dream. The result of my journey is knowing that you too have a dream. I’ve written this book to serve as a guide throughout the discovery of your dream, so that you can finally find your place and shape your destiny.

As you turn the pages of this book, you will learn from the stories of real youth and young adults who have discovered their dreams, as well as from a close look at the steps preceding the unveiling of my dream and its early development. Along the way, I will lay out the seven-step process through which anyone can find their own dream. These seven steps sequentially build upon one another and are designed for you immediate application. Although the dreamers you will read about in this book are youth and young adults, the information presented to you is universal. It will help you whether you’re nine or ninety years old.

If you read this book with an open mind and a passion to embark on the greatest adventure you’ve ever lived, then I promise that you will walk away with an understanding of the most important principles related to the study of your unique purpose in life. From there, it is your responsibility to act upon those principles. Ask yourself the big questions. Take inspired action. Seek out the people and information that you need. Commit to your future. Sacrifice to bless the lives of others. If you do this, you will inevitably be successful.

If you’re ready to figure out what the heck to do with your life, today’s your day.

Your dream, and the new life surrounding it, is right around the corner.

THE SEARCH FOR YOUR DREAM BEGINS

Do you remember how the discovery of my dream began? It didn’t begin with my pacing around an epic rain-speckled field. That was a milestone moment, and definitely a defining tipping point. But I doubt that day would ever have come for me, had I not made a defining decision three months previous.

It was the day I decided that I wanted—needed—my dream, that it began to, ever so slowly, unveil before me. In the midst of pressure from others and great desire within myself, I committed to the path of searching for my dream. I chose to become a dreamer.

The first of the seven steps to discovering your dream and figuring out what that the heck to do with your life, is Choose to Seek Your Dream. Choosing to seek your dream means that you accept the idea that you have a dream, and then suit up to go find it. This requires you to think like a dreamer, talk like a dreamer, and act like a dreamer. Choosing to seek your dream requires a paradigm shift from reacting to what is “realistic” and expected, to requiring the extraordinary and audacious. It requires you to stop pouring your focus into getting a good job, and instead into identifying the purpose that your work in life will achieve.

When people ask what you’re doing with your life, don’t buy time by telling them about something that mildly peaks your interest. Instead, respond with something along the lines of “I’m in the middle of discovering my dream. I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but I’m very excited!”

I guarantee that finding your dream possible. It might even be a lot easier to discover than you assume, especially if you take this first step to heart. So as you carry yourself through your day-to-day life, be confident in the chosen inevitability of your dream.

The core reason for this first step is simple: when you deliberately look for something, your chances of finding it drastically increase. You might stumble upon your dream in all it’s glory by accident, but there are no guarantees. After all, the reason you’re unsure of where to take your life is that your dream hasn’t shown up on it’s own. Looking for your dream is the first step.

This step should probably be obvious, but people often fail to understand the significance of it. If you skip this step, the benefit of knowing the next six steps is severely limited because you never consciously chose to begin the process in the first place.

Take a minute and imagine what your life would be like with if you had extreme clarity on where you wanted to go and what you wanted to achieve. Imagine how things would be different for you if you were on fire about life. Imagine how sweet it would taste to know that you were creating things that really mattered—to you and to others. Imagine how much you could grow if you were constantly pushed out of your comfort zone in the best way possible.

Now, take another minute and consider whether you’re up to the task of working hard and pushing yourself to find the right answers. Consider whether you’re ready to undertake the sometimes paralyzing fear of doing things that you’ve never done before. Consider whether you are willing to face rejection from people who don’t understand you. Consider whether you’re able to handle the stress of learning big lessons.

Pause your reading and secure a notebook, stack of papers, digital note taking system, or set of stone tablets for yourself. That is now your Dream Journal, and will be your companion from now on. In your newly formed Dream Journal, write out the greatest reasons that finding your dream matters to your life. Then, list out the biggest things that you are, and are not, willing to sacrifice in order to discover and live your dream. Don’t cut corners or skip over this exercise. It will set a foundation for what lies ahead.

Now that you have a rough idea of what may be required of you, and the benefits you can reap from your dream, you need to ask yourself this critical question:

“Do I choose to dream?” 

Dreams (and dreamers) get a lot of flack from the world, especially when they are young and just starting out. Living your dream is far from something that people talk about often, except in memes or jokes about eating a fifty tacos while living in a mansion. Not only do most people rarely talk about their dreams or directly encourage you to find yours, but if you haven’t already, you’ll encounter people who fight against the whole idea of your dream.

Some people tell you that pursuing your dream is unwise or impractical. This is said by people who don’t understand the power of a dream.

Some people declare that dreamers are naive and childish. These people have a misconceived idea of what a dream is.

Some people will flat out say that you can’t live your dream because once you get out into the “real world,” harsh reality will crush you. These are people who have allowed the difficulties of life to overpower them any dream that they once had.

In the eyes of the naysayers, any path that deviates from the status quo, the stereotype of “security,” is risky. According to them, choosing to dream is risky. They might be right about that, but as the saying goes, “no risk, no reward.” If dreaming is risky, that’s a risk that I’ll gladly take. Besides, doesn’t living your life by blindly moving with the flow of easy opportunities and the pressures of others pose a far greater risk? By failing to take a risk on your dream, you could very easily end up doing everything “right,” but never truly living.

So yes, I’m inviting you to take a risk, just as I did. Today is the day for you to commit to the search for your dream, no matter what opposition you may encounter. It’s time for you to decide that if dreams exist, you’re going to find one. Choose to take the risk of living life like you never have before.

In short, dare to dream.