Are we paying attention to the right stuff?

Take biology for instance. I never took a biology course in my life. I really have no idea how my body works, and yet I remain in good health. But when I visit the doctor, it's the same as visiting an auto mechanic or a computer technician. They ask a few questions, and then tell me it sounds like a problem with the gobbly-gook. I nod my head, as if I know what they're talking about, and then leave more confused than ever.

So, you could imagine my horror when my son comes up to me and says, "Daddy, what's DNA?" I had no clue. The only people that really care about it are the lawyers, the researchers and the people on CSI. I figured it had to stand for something, and I knew two things about it from watching television: it's all over our body, and it's unique for every body.

So, I gave him my "Daddy knows best" look and said, "Eric, it's an abbreviation. It stands for...Dreams Needing Attention." His face lit up and he went to the phone to tell all his friends about his new found knowledge. Then my wife came up, and said, "Hold on Eric. I decided to Ask Jeeves, and he said DNA stands for Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid." Silly Jeeves. So, I told my son that was the Latin equivalent for Dreams Needing Attention.

But if you think about it, my answer made perfect sense. Our dreams are our DNA. DNA is all over our body, and it makes us unique. So do our dreams!

My feet have dreams to run with Olympic speed. My hands have dreams to write another best-seller...or two. My eyes have dreams of seeing a summer without any road construction! And our hearts have dreams. Why else would the Internet become the world's largest dating service?

Sure, some of us share similar dreams. Other people also want to write a few best-sellers. But, when we look at the big set of our career dreams, our relationship dreams, our fun dreams and our other dreams, we are each unique in that large set of dreams.

So, DNA is all over our body, and it makes us unique. The thing is that when we're young, we have huge dreams. We want to cook like Martha Stewart, even if we don't know how to turn on the oven. The gap between our reality and our dreams is huge. As we grow older, we should be closing the gap to make these huge dreams come true. But instead, we pay attention to the dreams that are much closer to reality.

Our big dreams haven't gone away, we're just not paying attention to them. They're still in our feet, our hands, our eyes and our hearts.

Adults don't seem to think dreams come true, but they do. Dreams come true everyday. When you get up in the morning, you dream about getting to work on time. (For some this is a bigger dream than for others) At the beginning of the year, your sales manager will present a sales dream for the year. (sure, he might call it a target, or a goal, or an objective) Then the sales team works to make that sales dream a reality.

On a smaller scale, each day, you go about spending your time and money trying to make your dreams come true. The dreams you focus on will create your reality. If you're focusing on sales of one million per year, you'll probably get different results than if you're focusing on sales of ten million per year.

To change your reality, change the dreams that you're paying attention to.

If you pay attention to the dream of making it through the day, then that will be your reality. If you pay attention to the dream of becoming the person your DNA wants you to be, then your reality will go in a whole new direction.

We're not put on this planet to settle. We're put here to shine.

Your reality in the upcoming weeks, months and years will depend on the dreams you pay attention to today. Ask yourself what reality you want for yourself, then pay attention to the dreams that will get you there!