When you have a million things to do, everything feels important, and whatever’s next on the list gets done. You may have an edgy feeling that you’re missing out, that there’s something you should be doing, but who has time to think about it, right? You’re getting stuff done, so go go go.

Then you wake up in the middle of the night. You glance at the clock. It’s 4:00 AM. It’s quiet and dark. You can’t go back to sleep and start to think about things that never intrude on your busy days.

• What would it be like to take a year off to travel to all the national parks in the United States?
• If you wrote a novel, what would it be about? Time travel? History? Mystery? You have ideas that are just at the corner of your thinking.
• Maybe you could learn French, then travel to France and take cooking classes for a month.
• What about building a house?

You glance at the clock: 4:49. You’re still awake in that theta zone where your mind is free to wander.

• Maybe you could get a dog and teach him circus tricks.
• What about taking up oil painting? You could take a class at the local college.

You drift off. The light wakes you. It’s 7:00 AM, time to roll into your day, a day like every other day. Dream time is over. [sigh]

So how do you get to those big, cool things that wake you up in the middle of the night? It’s not a romantic answer and it doesn’t involve magic.

• You pick one.
• You figure out about how long it will take to get it done, and you set a deadline to finish.
• You add the deadline to your calendar, then figure out the first baby steps to start to work on it.
• Then you put the first baby step in your planner.
• Then you do it.

I guarantee you’ll still wake up in the middle of the night with crazy ideas, but when you do, you’ll smile because you picked a big one off the list. And you’ll laugh to think it all started as a dream.

I feel your energy popping! Dream. Then do it. The world wants to see what you’ve got in your dream time.