March Forth is a holiday that originated at BrightHouse. It’s about taking a day off to take on your dreams. On March 4th, we March Forth to our dreams. To help everyone take that first step, we’ve asked our luminaries to answer some questions about dreams and what it takes to make them come true.
But why do we need a day to take on our dreams? What stops people from pursuing them any other day of the year? How can you make the most of your March Forth? We’ve asked our luminaries to explore the topic of dreams with us to help answer these questions, and here’s what they said:
It’s important to first know that humans often fail at finding and achieving dreams that truly fulfill us.
Why is that? Well, we often find ourselves going after extrinsic dreams like material gain, instead of what really fulfills us – intrinsic dreams. These are dreams that we desire and have taken on for ourselves. Also, we frame many of our dreams as things we ought to do to avoid disaster, often called avoidance goals. We do this instead of outlining approach goals, meaning things we’d like to do to achieve an ideal.
Even when we have identified long-term dreams, our short-term goals override them.
It’s easy to trick ourselves into feeling satisfied once a short-term goal is met. As humans, we’re much more apt to go after the shiny things right in front of us (short-term benefits) versus investing in something that is far off in the distance, sometimes so far off that it’s hard to even imagine. That’s why long-term dreams are so difficult – and why we sometimes need a plan to stay on course.
We can help people achieve their dreams by making them into actionable plans.
Dreams, specifically achieving them, can be overwhelming. Like many good things in life, dreams take long-term investment, a great deal of work, and, most importantly, a plan. It’s important that our plans have steps that we can take each day to show progress and to help make our dreams seem feasible. That is actually the key to pursuing a big dream – small actions that, when completed, can lead to big results.
That’s why having a reserved holiday like March Forth is so important. The time leading up to March 4th can help us articulate what our dream might be and to make sure it’s something that truly gives us fulfillment. March Forth itself is a day where we’re encouraged to take the first small step in making our dreams come true. So take the day off to take the day on. Take that first step in your action plan (it’s the most important one, after all). Then, step by step, you’ll find yourself marching forward.
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