Have you ever been strolling through a shopping mall or car lot when – POW! – THE perfect product captures your attention? Perhaps it’s the sporty convertible with a V-8 engine and unbelievable acceleration. Maybe it’s the adorable dress that’s exactly your style, has a flattering fit, and accentuates all of your finest features.

Whatever the case, there’s an initial moment when you’re enamored with THE product. For a split second reality is suspended as you imagine the joys of owning it. Unfortunately, two words generally bring this pleasant daydream crashing to a halt: price tag.

The Dream Is Free, but the Journey Isn’t

When you first think about a dream, you only see possibilities and potential. As my friend Collin Sewell observed, all dreams begin obstacle-free. However, at some point we have to confront the Cost Question: Am I willing to pay the price of my dream?

If you want to achieve a dream, you have to be willing to do more than just imagine the outcome. You have to be willing to pay a price to start the journey. Dreams don’t fall into our laps by accident or good fortunate. They must be attained at the cost of personal sacrifice.

The Price Must Be Paid Sooner Than You Think

Dreams can’t be bought on impulse. Buy now, pay later financing isn’t an option. If you want to own a dream, then be prepared to make a hefty down payment.

I think most people realize that there will be some cost for achieving their dream. They have a vague notion that someday they will have to pay a price. But they don’t realize how quickly the costs come. Stepping toward a dream is like launching a rocket; massive amounts of energy must be expended at the beginning. Otherwise, gravity takes hold and the journey never gets off the ground.

The Price Will Be Higher Than You Expect

All dreams have price tags attached, and the cost is always higher than we expect to pay. Not once in my conversations with successful people have I heard someone say, “Getting to the top was much easier than I anticipated.” The reverse is true. Those at the pinnacle of their professions point to the hardships and sacrifices they had to endure to reach the top.

Having done a good deal of travel, I’ve learned the taxi principle: ALWAYS find out the cost before you get in the cab. Unfortunately, dreams are far too complex for us to accurately access the costs upfront. A noble dream is worth the expense, but the full costs won’t be apparent until we’re already on the journey.

The Price Must Be Paid More Than Once

As a young leader, I mistakenly thought acquiring a dream was like buying a ticket to Six Flags: pay once and enjoy the rides. Experience has taught me otherwise. Following a dream forces you to make continual sacrifices.

Just as a rocket must shed weight to escape gravity, so to a leader has to let go of some goals to accomplish others. You have to give up to go up.

Let’s face it: dreams don’t work unless you do. Easing off the accelerator and coasting won’t get you to your desired destination. For dreams to be apprehended, leaders must have an appetite for hard labor.

It Is Possible To Pay Too Much for Your Dream

Although sacrifices go hand in hand with success, it is possible to overpay for a dream. Don’t mortgage relationships or discard your moral compass in pursuit of career goals. I’ve seen it happen all too often. I’ve watched people sacrifice marriages, neglect their kids, ignore their health, and abandon their conscience – all in the name of a “dream.”

As Jesus of Nazareth once said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?” Some prices aren’t worth paying. Do not allow your dream to dictate your values. Rather, make sure your values inform and govern your dream

One of the major reasons so few people reach their goals is that most people don’t set specific goals and the mind just dismisses them as irrelevant. Most people want financial security, but have never considered how much money it will take. The mind cannot begin to formulate the strategies and actions required without specific information. Your mind will simply not respond to a request to get rich, have more, do better or make money. You must act like a bank loan officer with your goals.

The reason loan officers want to see a detailed business plan is that they know the entrepreneurs who are precise and specific are the ones who will succeed and pay off their loans.

If you ever begin to feel that you are losing your drive, if you feel like your energy level is down, your frustration level is up and you just can’t seem to muster the enthusiasm to face a challenge, check the pulling power of your goals. You may have outgrown your current targets and present lifestyle. It may be time for motivation by elevation. Raise your sights and challenge yourself with some goals that are farther out on the horizon.

This may require more knowledge, new skills, a new lifestyle. If so, that’s great! Many people resist goal-setting because they assume it leads to a formula-driven, highly uncreative life. Actually, the exact opposite can be true. People who passively assume that everything will somehow work out in the end can hardly be termed creative. They’re not creating their lives, they’re just hoping against hope that something good will happen to them.

Setting worthwhile goals is a much more imaginative approach. It’s fashioning and molding the life of your choice. It’s approaching your life the way an artist might stand before a new canvas, on which a beautiful painting can be crafted. There are other useful metaphors for creativity in goal-setting. The rudder of a plane, for example, is small and rigid, like a short term goal you might accomplish in just one day. But the rudder can turn the plane in any direction the pilot chooses. In that, there’s a great deal of freedom and flexibility.

Once you set a goal, you can adjust and fine tune it any way you wish. That’s creativity. And persistence is what allows you to keep progressing toward the goal no matter how many adjustments are required, and no matter how long it takes to accomplish.

The mind is the most magnificent bio-computer ever created. But remember, like a computer, it only responds to specific instructions, not to vague ideas. So come alive in 2009! Get laser focus and goals that are just out of reach, but not out of sight.

Get Specific and Achieve Great Things in 2009

The Tony Award winning musical is the story of a young girl whose mother and father die of cholera in India as the play begins. She is sent to live with her uncle in a large British manor. The old house is filled with romantic spirits. As the restless girl explores the grounds of the estate, she discovers the entrance to the magical secret garden, a place where anything is possible.

When she first enters the garden, she finds that it appears to be dead, much like her cousin, a bedridden boy, and her uncle, still haunted by memories of his lovely wife who died giving birth to the boy. In harmony with natural laws and principles, the girl faithfully plants seeds and brings new life to the garden. As the roots are warmed and the garden cultivated, she brings about a dramatic transformation of her entire culture within one season.

In my many years of teaching and training, I have seen several such transformations brought about by proactive people who exercise principle-centered leadership and the Seven Habits in their secret, private, and public lives.

When I returned home to Salt Lake City the next day to speak at my mother’s funeral, I referred to the Secret Garden, because for me and many others, my mother’s home was a secret garden where we could escape and be nurtured by positive affirmation. In her eyes, all about us was good, and all that was good was possible.

Our Three Lives
We all live three lives: public, private, and secret. In our public lives, we are seen and heard by colleagues, associates, and others within our circle of influence. In our private lives, we interact more intimately with spouses, family members, and close friends. The secret life is where your heart is, where your real motives are the ultimate desires of your life.

Many executives never visit the secret life. Their public and private lives are essentially scripted by who and what precedes and surrounds them or by the pressures of the environment. And so they never exercise that unique endowment of self-awareness the key to the secret life where you can stand apart from yourself and observe your own involvement.

Courage is required to explore our secret life because we must first withdraw from the social mirror, where we are fed positive and negative feedback continuously. As we get used to this social feedback, it becomes a comfort zone. And we may opt to avoid self-examination and idle away our time in a vacuum of reverie and rationalization. In that frame of mind, we have little sense of identity, safety, or security.

Examine Your Motives
The most critical junctures in my life take place when I visit my secret life and ask, “What do I think? What do I believe is right? What should my motives be?” These are times when I choose my motives. One such time occurred when I first heard Dag Hammarskjold say, “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual, than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.” That statement had such a profound effect on me that I started to say to myself in regard to my relationships with other people, “Wait a minute it’s my life. I can choose whether I want to make reconciliation with this person or not. I can choose my own motives.”

One of the exciting fruits of the “secret garden” is an ability to consciously choose your own motives. Until you choose your own motives, you really can’t choose to live your own life. Everything flows out of motive and motivation that is the root of our deepest desires.

Now, when I get into a frustrating or perplexing situation, I enter into my secret life. That’s where I find not only motives but also correct principles; that’s where the inner wisdom is. As I learn to be proactive in exploring the secret life, I tap into self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and into the exercise of free will to choose another motive.

People who regularly explore their secret life and examine their motives are better able to see into the hearts of others, practice real empathy, bestow real empowerment and affirm worth and identity.

A healthy secret life will benefit your private and public lives in many ways. For example, when I’m preparing to give a speech, I read aloud a favorite discourse on faith, hope, and charity because it helps me to purify my motive. I lose all desire to impress. My only desire is to bless. And when I go to a public setting with that motive, I have great confidence and inner peace. I feel more love for the people and feel much more authentic myself.

Executives who attend our leadership training in the mountain setting of Sundance often tell me, “This is the first time in many years that I’ve done any soul searching. I’ve seen myself as if for the first time, and I’ve resolved that my life is going to be different. I’m going to be true to what I really believe.” Recently, many people have written me to say, “Your habits and principles have made the difference. I’d never really thought about some of them before, but I resonate with them.”
That’s because these principles are found in people’s secret life.

And yet most of us spend our busy days privately doing our thing, never pausing long enough to enter the secret life, the secret garden, where we can create masterpieces, discover great truths and enhance very aspect of our public and private lives.

Having a healthy secret life is the key to having a quality private and public life, as well as a quality culture, product or service.