My parents came to America from Lithuania with nothing. They had a beautiful life in the old country, and lost it all when the Soviets occupied their land and took it all away. I gained something infinitely valuable from them as they built a new life here. My parents showed me by example that the only real security we have is our innate ability to dream new realities and create them into being, abilities which nothing and no one can take away without our permission, and which they did so well.
I always think about what I learned from them as we go into a new year. I’m filled with a feeling that was well expressed by the great poet Ranier Maria Rilke, “And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”
This threshold into a new year is a beautiful time for self-reflection, for dreaming of the future.
When I first started Effective Training Solutions in my 20’s, I was a staff of one. This made me the CEO, which made my mother laugh endlessly. When her laughter finally died down, she gave me a look filled with great pity and a touch of sadness and said, “Oh, honey, why don’t you get a real job?”
As confident as my parents had taught me to be, my parents were terrified I would fail. But I had learned well from them.
Even if it was all I had, I had a dream, and I knew that nothing else was going to make me happy but living that dream. I knew in my heart that you can make any dream come true if you don’t give up on it. I never gave up, and now, I’ve been living my dream, every day, for over 30 years.
One of the people who has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with me for over 20 of those years was working next to me one day. It was a holiday, technically a day off. I asked her, “Do you mind working on your day off?” She gave me the happiest, prettiest smile and said, “Dreams don’t take a day off.”
That has stayed with me.
Dreams don’t take a day off.
Life loses its color without our dreams.
I’ve been told, “That’s impossible” more times than I can count. I’m far from alone. My clients are often trying to make something happen others think can’t be done. There’s something wonderful about having “impossible” dreams that make you really happy. I always side with the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s wonderful book Through the Looking Glass, who told Alice very firmly: “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
I love nothing more than looking back on the previous year and laughing about all the “impossible” things I made happen, all the “impossible” things my incredible team and our wonderful clients made happen. The more “impossible”, the bigger the satisfaction. That is the essence, and the purpose, of being causative.
Other people telling you it’s “impossible” doesn’t make it so. Nothing’s impossible. Nothing is too big to dream. Not for me, not for you.
The big players on the world’s stage are dreamers. I get to work with many of them. They’re living an ongoing upward spiral of: dream something wonderful and make that dream come true, followed by a new, even more wonderful dream, a parade of dreams and success spiraling up and then up again, always getting better and better. Of course there are setbacks. They fade into the background when you don’t give up on the dream.
This is the path to a happy life. It starts with a dream.
I believe it’s healthy to spend time dreaming. And I mean really dreaming. I do it every day. If I miss a day, I wither. I wake each morning early, and before the sun rises, I sit with my morning tea and surrender to dreaming, to my dreams … for the day, for the year, for the whatever.
I don’t surrender this time of morning to my “to do” list, but allow myself the luxury of imagining what my heart wishes for most. I let the imaginings and dreams wander to my heart’s content. No limits. They grow rather magnificent. And only when my heart tells me that I have imagined and dreamed sufficiently, and I feel infused with the joy of the dreams, do I rise and go for my morning run above the San Francisco Bay, and look out at the new world and the rising sun with tremendous exhilaration.
I was absolutely delighted to read that the Spanish painter Salvador Dali did this too. He said, “Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?”
I understand that rapture, and the joy of experiencing it every morning. Rapture is the perfect way to start the day. And the new year.
Do you have a dream, an imagining, one that gives your heart a burst of happiness when you think of it?
You have my sincerest wish that this dream, plus all the many others you have, and the many more you will have this coming year, that they all become real, so you look back and say, “2026 was a year of dreams come true.”
Your dreams are the most precious and the most sacred of your creations.
May you find time to dream. May you live the life you dream with rapture. And may all your communications successfully convey your dreams to the important people in the world around you so they enthusiastically contribute their energies in helping you make your dreams come true.
Happy New Year!
Be the cause!