Build Systems to Build Support

Just like a house built on sand will wash away with the tide, a dream fueled purely by emotion will surely fall apart. 

Emotion is a beautiful part of dreaming. You get to feel joy, inspiration, excitement--so many high-vibration feelings. Emotions can propel you to take bold steps toward your dreams, and that is powerful.  

Where there are positive emotions, there are also difficult ones. Depression, anxiety, sadness, frustration. These emotions can easily halt the progress of a dream. This is what makes emotion an unreliable foundation for something that requires longevity. 

Emotions are volatile. I can't even tell you how many times I've been having the best day of my life only to feel completely discouraged the next. Ups and downs are a normal part of the human experience. There is nothing wrong with feeling your feelings. Just don't build the structure of your dream on them.

Dreams benefit from emotion, for example, encouragement, excitement, and validation. But sustainable dreams also require boundaries, logistics, community, and systems that keep them from falling apart on a tough day.

Creating a system that helps your dream thrive doesn't just protect it from emotional shifts, it also protects it when your time availability changes. The right system will help you continue to make progress even when time is short. 

Life is busy. That will always be true. I have spent the past seven years as a stay-at-home mom, and every year as my kids get older, my job as a mom gets more demanding. I have to be intentional about how I integrate time for my dream into my life so I can manage my responsibilities and still make time to do something I love--working toward bringing my dream to life. 

I built a system for how I approach chasing my dream, one that keeps me making progress even when I run out of time or have a bad day. It helps me communicate to my community what I need for support, and it reinforces a quiet form of self-respect that tells me, "My dream matters."

The system I created that brings me the greatest consistency is having regular planning sessions with myself. I do this monthly, weekly, and daily. At the beginning of every month, I sit down and write out what I want to accomplish in the coming month. I write out a couple goals, list them in order of priority, and then break that list down into what I will accomplish each week during the month. 

The weekly breakdown follows the same structure--outlining the most important tasks for that week and assigning them to be completed on specific days. The result is that each day, I have a prioritized list of what I desire to get done. If I have time for only one thing, then I know what I am going to do. If my husband wants to help me, I know how to direct that help.

The system itself is simple--listing tasks and breaking them down into smaller steps--but the real power of it is that it decreases the number of decisions I have to make each day. I don't have to think about what I am going to do when I wake up in the morning. I make time once a month to map everything out, adjust it weekly if needed, and I never have to sit there during the day and think "What should I be working on?" 

If my emotions shift, I still follow the plan I made. If my time availability changes, I pick only the top priority task to work on each day. 

What I personally love about this system is that it makes it easy for me to communicate my needs to the people in my life who are supporting my dream. I can be specific with, for example, my husband, about what I want to get done each day or each week. He is then able to offer support and help me reach those short-term goals. The way I am able to collaborate with and rely on my community through this structure greatly benefits my momentum as I continue to chase my dream year after year. 

Proper support has been essential to my journey of becoming an international model. I've needed my community and my resources. I still do. One of the best ways I helped them help me, and help myself, was by designing a system that structured my approach to chasing my dream.

If you're looking for a strong foundation to build your dream on, don't rely solely on how inspired you feel today. Build it on a system that will sustain you even when motivation fades. 

Dreams don't survive on emotion alone. They survive on intention, consistency, and support. 

A dream that survives the waves of life is a dream that stands on a carefully designed support system.