My parents came to this country with nothing, and taught me by example that security does not come from what you have. They had much in the old country, and lost it all. They showed me that security comes from the ability to dream and to create, which they did in abundance.

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.”

I call this “The Magical In-Between Week”. It’s a time of beautiful self-reflection, of dreaming of the future and that first brushstroke on that blank canvas of the new year that gives birth to all you will paint and call your year of 2024.

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 to no end. After she was finally done laughing, she looked at me, and with great pity and sadness, 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 that I was going to 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 that you can make any dream come true if you don’t give up on it. 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 years was working next to me one day. We were both working on a holiday, it was technically her 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. Yours as much as mine.

Next year is going to be filled with what others say you need to do and by many happenings in the world that try to push you in directions you don’t want to go. The year you live is ultimately going to be shaped by what you dream and decide to do with your dreams, and by what you create. That is the essence of being truly causative.

Life loses all its color without your dreams.

It’s great fun to have dreams that others may think impossible, but that make you really happy. Whenever someone tells me that something I want is “impossible”, I always smile inside and take the side of the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s wonderful book Through the Looking Glass, who told Alice very firmly and instructionally: “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 savoring all the impossible things I made happen, all the impossible things my team and my students made happen. The more impossible, the bigger the satisfaction.  Nothing’s impossible.  Nothing is too big to dream. Not for me, not for you. 

I can tell you that that the big players on the world’s stage, the big causative communicators, are dreamers. When one dream comes true, they’re already dreaming the next one. I get their exhilarating emails all the time. My email inbox bubbles over with their enthusiasm. It’s a constant cycle of: dream and make that dream come true, followed by a new, even more wonderful dream, over and over and over again, spiraling up and up and up, getting better and better.  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 only to what my heart wishes for most. I simply let myself find what my heart does wish for most, then imagine and dream, and let the imaginings and dreams wander to my heart’s content. No limits. I let them become rather magnificent. And only when my heart tells me that I have imagined and dreamed sufficiently, and I feel infused with my glorious dreams, do I rise and go for my morning run and look out at the 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 having it every morning. Rapture is the perfect way to start the day.

Do you have a dream, an imagining, that gives your heart a flutter of happiness when you think of it?

You have my sincerest wish that this particular dream, plus all the hundred others you have today, and the thousands you will have this coming year, that they all become reality so that at the end of the year you look back and say, “This year was a dream come true.”

Your dreams are the most precious and the most sacred of your creations, and the source of your creativity.

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 become reality.

May this next year be your dream come true.

Happy New Year!

Be the cause!