Recently, I had a conversation with some folks that spanned all kinds of topics and somehow landed on the fact that Oprah Winfrey is getting her own TV network. Personally, I’m happy for her – if she likes it, then I love it for her. (You might need to be old skool to get that saying.) I’m very curious to see how it unfolds, what she’s going to bring to the table.

Of course there were some detractors in the group with the usual moaning and groaning. “Who she think she is?”, “She already has a TV show, radio show, a magazine, etc. How much more does she need?”, “How much money does any one person need?”

*Sigh*

Not long ago, I saw part of a story about Floyd “Pretty Boy” Mayweather. Someone asked a person in his camp why Floyd kept pushing…”how much money does he need to make?”. The trainer looked at the person as if to say, “You too stupid for words” and asked them this, “How come nobody ever asks Bill Gates when he’s gonna stop making money?”

Ha! Ain’t that the truth! Does anybody ever ask that of Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch or Alan Greenspan, etc.? No. Hmmmm….

In the grand scheme of things, what does it matter to us if someone is “still” making paper? The person in my conversation acted as if she was personally put out by Oprah expanding her media empire. Why? Were you trying to get that network for yourself? Uh huh. Didn’t think so.

Newsflash: it don’t cost you nothing to dream. Matter of fact, if you were to evict some of those people and jacked up thoughts that live rent free in YOUR head, you might have more room to dream. The beauty of a dream is that, until you’re ready, until you want to, no one has to even know about it. You can make it as big as you want, color it as boldly as you want, dress it up any way you want…and who – other than you – can say whether it’s right or wrong? If you invest the time and energy in building it in your head so that you’re clear about it, so that you’re sure, so that you’re unshakeable (not inflexible), when your dream hits the light of day, nothing that anybody else says to you, about you, around you will knock you off your path.

What gets me most about this conversation and others like it is that people who don’t have a dream or choose to dream inside a tiny little prescribed box seem to get really agitated when other folks explode their dreams and let their vision for their life run free without borders.

I used to be that person. Yep. Some days that’s hard to believe…other days, I simply pray for an end to the ‘relapse’. It was as if the edges of their dream was literally pricking me. And in some ways it was. It was challenging me to dream my own dream, to let it breathe, to flesh it out in my head then on paper before putting energy into giving birth to it and living it out loud.

I used to think that part of the problem was that we don’t teach or encourage people to dream. Or maybe we don’t challenge them to dream bigger. I still think that’s true to a certain degree. But maybe what’s really missing is that we don’t teach them or encourage them to actually bring their dream to life.

One thing I’ve learned and I share with people all the time is that it isn’t so much what you’re looking at, it’s what you see. I believe that. Some folk have let things in their lives blind them, to leave them with spiritual cataracts, to abort their dreams. Don’t let that be you. My greatest fear in this life is getting to the end of it, finding that I didn’t live it to the fullest and knowing that the reason behind that was ME.

Get your vision checked. And then remove the boundaries of fear that are stifling your dream. Stretch yourself. Challenge yourself. If you can accomplish your “dream” with easy, you aren’t dreaming big enough. Remember, “Dream a Little Dream” ain’t nothing but a song lyric.

Dream big. Dream bold. Dream beautifully. Dream in color. Dream out loud.

Live DELICIOUSLY!

J