"Dreams" - the underestimated book

Some people consider How to Make Your Dreams Come True to be my best book. Others can’t stand it. This ambivalent response probably explain why the sales have never been as good as my other two books. Personally I think it is at least as good as many top selling self help books and a good deal better than many!

But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can find out for yourself very cheaply because it is only £5.99 on Amazon UK at the moment. And to whet your appetite I plan to run a series of articles on this blog over the next few weeks on themes from the book.

Buy How to Make Your Dreams Come True

Comments

[David]

Hi Mark, just to let you know that, despite being a long-time subscriber, I am seriously considering unsubscribing from your blog.

The signal-to-noise ratio for me has dropped dramatically recently. To me it is reading like a boring diary interleaved with adverts!

I'd really like you to return to the old days where you pumped out a series of useful ideas that made us understand your books better (even if that means much less frequent posts).

[Mark Forster]

Dear David

Sorry you feel that way. Most of the comments I have had have been from people who like the new arrangement, but obviously no change is going to please everyone.

The idea of the diary is to show the DIT system in action - which is I think one way of helping you to understand the book better. The reason it's boring is because I am concentrating on describing how the system works rather than the amazing and salacious details of my colourful life.

The blog entry you are commenting on is announcing a series of articles which will have the precise intention of helping people to understand one of my less understood books better.

As for advertisements - well, this site is a commercial one and has never pretended to be otherwise.

Although I appreciate that some people, such as yourself, don't like the extra volume, the fact is that the number of daily hits on this website has risen by over six times since the beginning of this month.

What I suggest you do is make a note to come back to the site once a month or so and look at the "Most Popular articles" section in the sidebar for anything which you haven't seen before.

[Mark Forster]

P.S.
One way I've thought of to help people in your situation is to introduce a new category "Articles" which will be reserved for proper articles. That means that if you unsubscribe from the blog you can identify what you might be interested in when you visit the site by going to that category in the Blog Archive.

I also have a vague feeling that it's possible to subscribe to a feed for a specific category. I'll have to investigate that. I'll let you know!

[Mark Forster]

P.P.S
I have put a Latest Articles entry on the sidebar in the Navigation section. That should make it easy for you to identify what you want to read when visiting the site.

[Mark Forster]

P.P.P.S.
The URL to enter into your feed reader for the Latest Articles Only feed is http://www.markforster.net/blog/rss.xml?categoryId=168181

[David]

Thank you. Much appreciated!

[Matt]

Hi Mark,

I'd be really interested in more depth and breadth around the 'Dreams' ideas. I find it your most intriguing book. However, when I try to follow the ideas I worry I'm missing details so turn to a more detailed system such as DIT to keep track of everything. But then I start to feel I'm not really moving toward my dreams, just managing minutiae. I've yet to find a happy medium between the two - doing them both feels like a lot of extra effort and far from the flowing promise of 'Dreams'.

Regards,

Matt

[Mark Forster]

Matt:

The great advantage of "Do It Tomorrow" is that it keeps you on top of your work. This gives you energy and renewed enthusiasm to achieve your goals. It also gives you a method of telling when you are taking on too much.

Usually the feeling that you are managing minutiae comes from not being selective enough about what you feed into the DIT system. As I say on the Home page of this website "Don't get caught in the activity trap!"

The sure sign that you have taken on too much busy work is that you feel overwhelmed but not challenged by your work.

[Matt]

Hi Mark,

Makes sense. I'm going to revisit the vision creation exercises from Dreams to provide the context for what I keep and cull from the will do list when I find myself getting behind. Hopefully that will give me the feeling of pushing in the right direction.

Hope your back feels better soon.

Matt

[Mark Forster]

Thanks, Matt, I am feeling much better now - though still not 100 per cent.

Keep us posted on how you get on with the vision!

[Mark in Texas]

I started the "How to Make Your Dreams.." book and made it to page 30, then it went on the stack of incomplete reads. I'm wondering if I've missed something though, because I've read some positive reviews. What is the gist of what this book is about? I just had a hard time understanding what the intent is.

[Mark Forster]

I suggest you look at the summary on p. 193.

[Hannah]

I have found that this book is one I come back to every now and then as a way to focus what I am aiming for. The idea of having a clear vision of where you want to be seems to work well over time - and comparing your present situation to that vision to see what needs to change can also be helpful in ensuring your goals/projects are actually going to get you where you want to be.

It is also helpful in making sure you trim back those committments that don't move you in the right direction, however worthwhile they may seem in and of themselves - there are only 24 hours in the day and you can only do so much!

The dialoguing is something I have only recently started to use in earnest having seen it also mentioned elsewhere. My method is maybe just a little different but probably in the same vein (Mark, correct me if I'm wrong here!). I think of something I want to achieve then one of the 'voices' takes the form of an interiewer asking the future self (voice 2) how I managed to achieve the particular goal. The first time I tried it I was amazed at what I came up with - I was writing in a journal type situation. It seems to reveal insights into how you can go about achieving goals and projects that somehow ordinary thinking doesn't seem to produce.

I don't know if any of this sheds any light on the 'Dreams' book and sometimes you have to be in the right frame of mind to get the most from some books, but I hope my experiences help to explain it in some way.

Good luck

[Hannah]

PS I guess I should also say that I use it as a supplement to the other Mark Forster books. The others seem to be more about the nitty gritty of day to day time/self management whereas 'Dreams' is to me more of an aid to creating and keeping focused on where you're going - your overall vision for yourself and your life.

You can be the most organised and efficient person on the planet but if you haven't worked out where you want to be headed you won't be very effective and it won't do you much good, nor make you very happy with life!

[MC]

A tactic I came across called 10-10-10 asks you to consider any decision about which path to follow from the points of view of how would this decision seem in 10 days 10 weeks and 10 months, or, I suppose, 10 years.