By: Alireza Hejazi

As 2010 is coming to its final days, there are good reasons to work with your dreams for the future in the coming year. One reason is that they have been lingering on your waiting list for a long time.

Another reason is that your dreams are usually bigger than your (real) personal mental and physical strengths or they cannot be done alone. They should be tuned realistically with your current capabilities. Don't ask yourself to solve huge (global) problems, but to solve affordable ones. If you want to realize your dreams for the future, you should touch the reality first. Learn what you struggle with and what makes you move toward the future. Walk a mile in real shoes and then go on with your fantastic shoes. Invite others to cooperate with you in promoting common futuristic values. What can your colleagues and friends do in just 30 days to change your organization’s future for the better? Build an action plan around that.

Dreams cannot come true by chance or empty hope alone.  They should find appropriate conditions and enough room. Once, George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” Yes, you should build up your desired conditions. But what kind of dreams may find a chance for becoming true? You may ask yourself questions, like: “Does this dream enliven me? Does this dream align with my values? Do I need help from others to make this dream come true? Will this dream require me to grow into my true self? Will this dream bless others, too?” Because we clearly know the answers to all of these questions we usually leave realizing our dreams for another time -- an unknown future!

If you are going to realize your dreams in 2011, you may find following suggestions useful for your (personal & organizational) future plans.

1. Commit yourself to a determined goal. Set a goal for the coming year and agree to do something funny or silly when you reach it.

2. Take a month to engage those who may have similar goals to yours in conversations about why they give to you. Use their responses to develop action plans you can use with your own prospects.

3. Brainstorm a list of adjectives that defines your organization's personality. Are you aggressive, creative and smart as an organization? Or perhaps credible, reflective, and academic? Use those adjectives to inspire the new design of organization you create.

4. For your year-end appeal, get your brightest folks to brainstorm one theme or big idea to weave through your direct mail, email, social media, and website. Use the same headlines, design elements, and ask components at each point of contact.

5. Make a list of the organizations you consider either peers or competitors. Get all the people you usually need information together, then surf the organizations’ websites together and find their strong points or changes.

6. Ask the question, how would an organization experience this change? Talk about what they're doing that you can learn from, and what you're doing that outshines them -- both will help you grow, change, or stay the same more strategically.

7. You can instantly see the “big picture” hidden in your dreams upon their realization. It’s all part of your inner desire, which you need to discover. It’s been proven that people will generally do more to avoid pain than to obtain pleasure. So why not use that habit to your advantage and realizing your long-awaited dreams?

This whole idea started out with me wanting to survey my readers and clients. I just summarized it within seven mentioned above items. Think about it and perhaps you could add more steps necessary for developing a useful action plan.