Ah, the use of a quote out of context…

Chaim Herzl wrote (he did not speak a word of Hebrew)…

אם תרצו, אין זו אגדה; ואם לא תרצו, אגדה היא ואגדה תישאר

The translation is “If you will it, then it is no dream; and if you do not will it, a dream is all it is and a dream it shall remain.”   The dream to which Herzl referred is the establishment of the State of Israel.  We, who live now in 2013, cannot understand how much of a chimera this would appear before the turn of the Twentieth Century.  A dream that continues to stay a dream.

But, that’s not the point of this post.  No, I am talking about the dreams we have for our new ventures.  Too many of us have wonderful dreams.  The problem is that many of them fall into the category of “If my mother had wheels, she would be a trolley car.”   A dream is great- but it’s our actions and our will to fulfill that dream that makes it possible.

We have to act.  We need to take that dream, build a plan around it, with milestones and performance indicators, and work each and every day to achieve our goals and dreams.  The kind of monitoring and analysis that I described in this post.

But, as you all should know, things don’t always work perfectly.  (My standard rule is if they do, I’ve been mighty lucky and am about to find out that my plan has a fatal flaw that I failed to recognize- and search for it, before it overtakes me.)

Which brings up another fact we must recognize.  There are many paths to our goals.  The ones we first chose- or were chosen for us- may be very good.  But, they are not the only way. Consider your journey to your dream or goal akin to a path your GPS has outlined.  We all know we sometimes miss a turn- or decide that traffic is horrendous and need to effect a detour… And, as Ginny (the name my son gave my GPS) annoyingly says, “Recalculating.”   She may be scolding, but she- and I- still make our destination.

So, can you.   Recalculating to adapt to a “missed mark” or “turn” is not a life failure; it’s a setback or more interesting path to one’s dream.

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