The Dreamer’s Manual:
16 Steps to Achieve Your Creative Goals
Step 6: Be Unrealistic
What Is and Is Not
Dreaming is an unrealistic activity. You must posses a healthy doses of optimism in order to believe something, which doesn’t currently exist, can be brought into being.
Planes, automobiles, computers; master works of art, literature, and music; great advances in science and medicine—none of these things existed at one time, and the dreamers behind these creations often fought uphill battles to develop their ideas.
Being a visionary means embracing cognitive dissonance. You must be simultaneously wise and foolish, groundbreaking and derivative, simplistic and complex. In short, you must find a way to balance reality and unreality.
What you hope to create, before you create it, only exists in the realm of your imagination. This is why people sometimes refuse to support a creative artist’s idea: because they lack the vision to see the idea as something which can be realized, and/or they doubt the artist has the resources to develop it.
Where Reality Fits In
You cannot be completely unrealistic when pursuing your dreams. The tools of reality are what turn unreal ideas into tangible items. For an idea to be realized, it must contain equal parts imagination and effort.
Inspiration strikes like lightning, in “Aha” moments, but the grunt work of fleshing out a vision is often mundane and tedious. The thrill of inspiration is what begins the creative process, but consistent, high-quality work habits are what bring ideas to fruition.
Step 6: Be unrealistic