How Dreams Become Reality!

Have you ever wondered how dreams go from being just a thought to becoming a living, breathing reality? Have you ever wondered if there’s a specific pattern to the way positive change comes about in life? Maybe you’ve thought it was luck all this time. Well, the truth is, success leaves clues. These 4 steps are part of the process of making your dreams a reality and they work every time. You must get clear on a specific vision, put your focus and attention on that vision as often as possible, act on your ideas and inspired intuition, and keep taking the steps you can take to get closer to your goal. Repeat this process over and over and eventually you will reach your dream. This personal story from my life illustrates this process in vivid detail.

Three years ago my brother and sister-in-love and their three wonderful kids came up to Southern California from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to visit my family and me. John and I, and our kids, had lived in the U.S. for almost a decade. I missed seeing my brother and his family, particularly getting to be around his kids while they were growing up. Anyway, on this visit from my brother and his family, I had an idea! Jose and Ashley (my brother and sister-in-law), they had some interviews and meetings that day, so I was taking care of their three kids - my nieces and nephew, Emma, Lily and Logan.

One of the main reasons that my family moved to the United States from Cabo San Lucas was to give our daughters the opportunity to have a better education and a high school experience. They wanted the sports, activities, the AP classes, the whole high school lifestyle. My kids got to have that life and LOVED every second of it. In my heart, I wanted to share that experience with my nieces and nephew as well. So my idea was to take my nieces and nephew around my community to look at the school campuses here while their parents were out. So that’s exactly what I did.

I want to pause here and say, when you have an idea it’s VERY important that you listen to it. If that idea keeps nudging you and keeps coming back, honor the idea and act on it when you can. Intuition and ideas are gifts from God (or the Universe) moving you further down your own divine path. Anyway, I’ll keep moving with the story.

I asked the kids if looking at the schools felt like something they would want to do. You see, forcing an idea or a dream on someone else is never the right thing, but asking for permission to help someone see an expansive future for themselves can be a great thing. Immediately, Emma, Lily and Logan all responded, “Yes, Tia! Yes, Tia!” (Tia means aunt in Spanish.) So I put them in the car and off we went. I took them to the big schools in the area - an elementary school for Logan, a middle school for Lily, and a couple of high schools for Emma. They fell in LOVE with the idea of going to high school here. My girls’ lives absolutely took off in high school. They had the best years playing golf and soccer, working hard in AP and honors classes - truly living their best lives in their high school years. It was so fun for me to see the excitement in my nieces’ and nephew’s eyes as they started imagining that kind of life for themselves. You see, in Cabo, the schools look very different and don’t really focus on sports or anything outside of academic education. I told Emma and Lily, one already in high school, the other about to start, “Can you imagine? You could go to school here too.”

The kids were “stoked” and so happy to say the least. I wanted to plant the seed of the DREAM and POSSIBILITY for my nieces and nephew to have the same opportunities that my kids had had here in the States. They couldn’t wait to tell their mom and dad about seeing all the schools that day. Immediately, I was like, “Uh-oh. Have I gone too far?” But I knew deep in my heart that I was just showing them a possible future and everything would turn out the way it was supposed to. So when my brother & his wife, Ashley, came home that day, I didn’t say a word.

I had honored my idea, my intuition, and was now holding the outcome with an open mind. I showed the kids what was possible, but I knew I needed to release my own attachment to their dreams for their life. It is a wonderful thing to see greatness in a person and show them what could be possible, but to leave the rest up to them. I also released the attachment to my own dream of having my brother and his family closer. What would be, would be.

What I knew is that my nieces, in particular, were so excited about the schools they’d seen that they were definitely going to talk to their parents at one point or another. So, my brother and his family went back to Cabo. About a month had passed, and my sister-in-law called me and she said, "Oh, my gosh, Dora. Lily cannot stop talking about the tour that you took them to all of the schools near where you are. They really want us to move up there and be with you guys." Obviously, I was delighted! My nieces had really developed their own dream. Yes, I’d opened the door, but they wanted that life for themselves.

Once Emma and Lily shared their deep desire to live in California and go to high school here in the States, the ball started rolling quickly. My brother and sister-in-law started to talk about moving, and they began that process - doing what they could with what they had from where they were. They didn’t know how it was all going to come together, but they knew it was a “YES!” As much as they loved Cabo, they were done there. They wanted to move because they wanted to give their children the best education and the best opportunities. Cabo San Lucas brought many dreams to life for my brother and sister-in-law, as it had done for me over the years, but entering a new phase of life sometimes means making big changes. It was time.

So Jose and Ashley and their three kids made the move about 18 months ago. Six months to the day from when they visited and I showed the kids the schools, they moved to Orange County where my family and I live. Now they live just 5 minutes away from our house! We see each other all the time and do many, many family activities together.

Emma and Lily have made their high school dreams a reality. Emma got do her last year of high school in the States. She got scholarships to many different colleges. She’s now a freshman at her dream school. She’s a DreamBuilder. Lily is a sophomore in high school now and on the varsity track team. She is 118th in the USA for Track. She takes AP and honors classes. Her GPA is like 4.5 ! She works really hard at it, but she loves it. None of this would have ever happened had it not been for the girls putting themselves inside the dream and telling their parents, "I want to go to the States. I want to go to school there. I want to do this."

What parent doesn't want the best for their kids? Jose and Ashley's move to the States wasn’t easy nor without a lot of sacrifices. They were leaving their great jobs, their friends and community that they’d been a part of for years and years. Their work would change. Their daily lives would change. Sometimes, though, when you’re building a dream, you must sacrifice the lesser for the greater. In this case, giving the kids an opportunity to go to high school in the United States was “the greater.”

A few weeks ago, my brother and sister-in-law invited me to go see Lily run at an invitational track meet tournament. Lily broke her own personal record in the race, but not only that, Lily and her team ended up winning second place for all of the high schools throughout California. She came up to where we were with this beautiful medal on her neck just beaming! She was so happy, so excited. She was living her dream life. Her dreams of sports. Her dream of having her parents there. Her dream of having her Tia Dora there. For me, it was a very touching moment and, in a way, it was surreal because it's what dreams are made of. Lily was living her dream and I was living mine. Getting to watch my niece do what she loves.

I share this story not to impress you, but to help you see that your dreams are absolutely possible too! If you can dream it, it can be yours. You have to think about it, ACT AS IF, feel yourself inside the vision like it’s happening now. Take action steps and don’t stop. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop. Keep moving. Make that phone call, research that topic, work hard. Be of the mindset that it’s happening NOW. Not, "It WILL happen." It is ALREADY happening.

Seeing my brother and sister-in-law embrace each other when Lily crossed that finish line was such a beautiful moment in my life. It represented a dream fully realized - all of us there together, celebrating love and family, success and sacrifice, and all the possibilities that are yet to come.

I am so grateful to get to do this work on myself, with my family, and to share it with you. The life I’m living is one that I absolutely love and have created by design. You can build the life of your dreams, too. Just keep MOVING and continue to ACT on your inspired ideas! AND DO NOT GIVE UP - EVER!!!