Focus.

If you want to see your dreams come true you are going to have to get up earlier than all the rest of the world and be ready, get ahead.  It's going to be terrible at times. You are going to sweat, cry and feel totally lost in moments.  You are going to have to leave family events, parties and fun early in the evening to go home and finish that days work and only to crash late at night.  You are going to have to do what everyone else tells you, you don't need to do.  When everyone else is going out for one more drink, you probably need to just go home.  Sure, there is balance but often it is plain sacrifice. 

I don't know much.  I know what I want, and I don't know exactly how to get there but I am learning.  It's so easy to fly off into someone elses dream. 

You meet girls getting on planes for two years in Africa and you think- "I should apply and go do that."
 
You see girls getting engaged and so thrilled for planning a wedding and my heart so quickly longs for their reality, but I know I have to stay focused.  

You see friends graduating with yet another degree and you instantly want to rush back to the classroom.  

Our stories are all so different.  In the book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller explains how you can see someone else love something, and you then instantly love it yourself.  I think he hits the nail on the hammer.  It's so easy to see anothers life and want to have that for yourself. 

It takes focus.  A lot of focus.  Stay right there on your own path making your own dreams happen.  Make a poster, write is on your wall, sing about it in the shower.  Just get it in your head over and over.  What is the end goal? Don't stray off because the other opportunities presents themselves. 

I am fully convinced that most people die at the end of their life with dreams still in mind because along the way they lost all focus and lived someone elses dream rather than risking everything to make their own happen.