Setting your personal goals is very important for achieving success. First of all though, you need to understand what types of dreams exist. Only one type of dreams is called goals.

I must admit that I have never found this theory anywhere else. And I have never shared it with someone. I borrowed the visualization into four sections from Johari Windows, but that is everything borrowed.

Time to read

Time to read: 6 minutes (based on 150 wpm)

The four windows of dreams

The types of dreams can be visualized in two dimensions: the level of acceptance / understanding that you have about them and the level of acceptance / understanding that the other have about them.

Personal goals

Let’s start with the most obvious category of dreams. Those accepted by you and by the others. I call them your goals. These dreams are most commonly public and known to everybody.

Examples

• Your desire to go to a university and study a specific topic
• Your desire to get that dream job and earn enough cash to support your other wishes
• You desire that promotion or that certification
• To reach the next level in a skill you are practicing

Fulfillment

Fulfilling those dreams, however, does not make you happy. Those dreams tend to form like a never-ending ladder: the more you achieve, the more you want. There is nothing wrong with that, you just have to be careful or you will be stuck in an endless loop that would exhaust you.

When those dreams come true, you feel OK or content at best.

Personal dreams

On the second place come the personal dreams. These are the dreams you accept and desire and the others probably don’t know about. Here we are in the more intimate part of yourselves. You can share those dreams with others and turn them into something like a goal, but they always stay your personal dreams.

Examples

• The desire to learn to dance
• The desire to write a book
• The dream to go to space
• The dream to visit a distant place

Fulfillment

Until you work on your personal dream you feed a sense of purpose in your life, you feel that you life matters. When you fulfill such a dream, you feel really happy. This feeling does leave you so fast, like it does for your goals.

Acquired dreams

These are the most dangerous dreams. These are the dreams you acquired or somebody forced you to acquire. If you define, understand and accept those dreams, they turn into goals again, but a very dangerous type of goal.

Examples

• Parents that put their child under pressure to marry … someone
• Dominating partners who are plain influential
• Parents that what their child to become a certain type of artist against his or hers will
• Employer who forces an employee to develop in a certain area

You see where I am going with this and why these are extremely dangerous?

Fulfillment

Fulfilling those dreams brings you marginal returns to you but makes the person who forced you the dreams happy. Is that fair?

How can you find them

Look for those goals/dreams that seem forced when you pursue them. Those dreams that do not yield the anticipated results.

Divine dreams

This is the last type of dream, that I uncovered late yesterday and in the early hours of today. These are the dreams neither you, nor the others know about. How is that possible? First of all, this is why I called them “divine” and second of all there is a third dimension involved called “God”. Those are the dreams with which you were born, which were implanted into your very self.

I am not forcing you to be religious, but hear me out. There is a type of dreams that you only realize when they come true. Have you had one of those?

Examples

• You have always wanted a partner and/or family
• When you answer the questions that you have never formulated, but that have been bothering you your entire life
• If you are in a place and/or situation to where you feel like all your steps and actions have been taking you

Fulfillment

When those dreams come true (usually by accident or in the form a divine revelation) the feeling is hard to describe. You can feel ecstatic, joyful, extremely happy. But you can also feel overwhelmed, scared and without a clue. You can feel like you have lost control of your life and probably this is the truth.
Accept those dreams as milestones through which you just have to pass. They will all make sense – some day.

How can you find them?

You can’t! Just let them find you.

Summary

Understanding your dreams can significantly improve your self-awareness. Based on my theory defining and rooting out the “acquired dreams” can help you live a better and happier life. Pursuing your “personal dreams” yields the best results. And last but not least, you should always be keeping an eye for the “divine dreams”.