When my daughter lost her 3rd tooth, the tooth fairy came bringing along a silver dollar and some flying fairy dust. Boy was my daughter excited!

Before I knew it, she jumped over to the edge of the bed, sprinkled some of the fairy dust on her head, believing she was going fly! She was sure of it! She threw down her arms tightly by her side, held her head up high, and literally tried to take off like she was being shot out of a rocket! (… Nothing happened…)

So she tried again. She threw her head back, slapped her arms firmly to her sides, bent her knees and then straightened real fast – EXPECTING to just take off. (Sadly… she stayed rooted to the ground)

I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It had all happened so fast… My eyes welled up… and in that moment… I would have given ANYTHING to see her fly… I would have given anything to NOT have to see her shoulders collapse in defeat… her head lilt forward… and sadly turn around and tell me that it didn’t work.

She was so excited! She was so confident!

She was ready for anything and was hoping for everything!!!

So we hugged and talked about it. By the way, flying fairy dust only works in your dreams, and in never-never land – In case you were wondering why it didn’t work for her…

But, you know what’s great? My little girl STILL believes she can fly. (I believe it too.)

Today, I want you to fly.

SO LETS TALK ABOUT MAKING YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.

The first step is to DREAM.

My challenge to you is to dream every single day this week, like little kids dream. Where you get excited about it.

It’s just like when my daughter wakes up in morning, climbs into bed with me and says, “Daddy I was flying in my dreams last night!!!”

You know, Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream!”

Let your dreams be so real and meaningful, that you get excited to rise every day and pursue them with desire, and drive and discipline and intensity and passion and purpose…

My challenge to you is to dream like you haven’t dreamed in years… to come up with something that is so good, so exciting for you that you become obsessed about it.

Here’s what I mean. When I was 11 years old, I went to my father with a problem.

Now, although I didn’t know it at the time… My dad then gave me one of my first lessons about greatness; about making my dreams come true.

At the time, our school was having this presidential physical fitness test, where I had to do push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups. Some of the kids had done more pull-ups than I thought I could ever do.

You see, a couple of them had done 10 pull-ups. The most pull-ups I’d ever been able to do was five. So, I went to my dad VERY upset… because I couldn’t imagine how I could match them.

I remember stumbling over the words even to explain my situation to him. It went something like this: Dad, you know, I have this… this thing that I want, this test, this test I have to do, this goal.

I stumbled along for a bit until he finally told me to just spit it out. I managed to tell him that for the test I needed to do 10 pull-ups. In fact, I wanted to do 11 pull-ups because I wanted to beat my friends.

At this point my Dad sat down and said, okay Trevor, how many have you done so far? I admitted the most I’d ever done was 5. Hence my dilemma and my defeat before I even started.

Now, I believed in my Dad completely at this point. If my Dad said something was possible, then I BELIEVED that it. He if said it ANYTHING was possible, it was!

My dad said, “Trevor, how many do you want to do?”

I said 11.

He said, “Trevor, 11 pull-ups? No problem.”

Just like that!

He said, “Trevor, if you want to do 11 pull-ups, you’ve got to become obsessed about it.”

I wasn’t quite sure what obsessed meant but he went on to tell me how.

“Now all you have to do is do exactly what I say. Deal?”

I assured him I would do anything he said.

The first thing he told me was to make sure I could SEE IT. It was important to SEE myself doing those 11 pull-ups. He told me to “close my eyes and imagine doing 11 pull-ups.” Not just 5 but doing 11 – easily. He hammered on that point.

“You’ve got to see it, see it, see it. Now, I want you to see it as many times as you can – in your mind.”

I said, all right Dad. I can do that. As I stood there, I started practicing imagining it…

Then he said, here’s the second part…

“The second part, is now, you’ve got to SAY IT. So I want you to say, ‘I can do 11 pull-ups.’ and… he made me repeat it – over and over.

I said, “I can do 11 pull-ups.”

He said, “say it again, say it again…”

Then he said, “When you’re brushing your teeth, I want you to be saying – I can do 11 pull-ups.” When you’re eating lunch and when you’re eating dinner, I want you to say I can do 11 pull-ups. I want you to SEE yourself doing it and SAY it all the time, like say it a million times… before you go to bed. Say it out loud and say it to yourself. I even want you to dream about it.

“The third thing I want you to do; is I want you to FEEL IT. You need to go into the future… You need to pretend like you can actually feel like the kind of guy who’s done 11 pull-ups. Feel what would it be like. Feel how would you walk… Feel how would you talk… Feel how you would hold yourself… and I want you to see yourself in the future having done 11 pull-ups.”

Then, he asked, “Any questions?”

I think I said something like, “But Dad… shouldn’t I practice?”

He said, “NOPE! All I want you to do is SEE IT, SAY IT and FEEL yourself doing 11 pull-ups. So are you ready? Good. Now get out of here – you’ve got some work to do!”

So, I did this for days.

It seemed I did nothing else… I dreamt it; I said it over and over again… I imagined and FEELING what it would be like after I BLASTED-OUT those 11 pull-ups! I was obsessed. (I even told my friends I could do 11 pull-ups.)

Now, this is how obsessed I want you to get about your dreams, because check out what happened about 3-4 days later…

I was in PE class… The teacher called my name. I walked up to the bar. As soon as I jumped up onto it, I started pounding them out… 1-2-3-4-5 (the first 5 like nothing); 6 pull-ups, then 7, and then… 8.
At this point I was struggling a bit… then I did 9 pull-ups.

I took a deep breath… I pulled and struggled and pushed out 10… and I can still remember seeing in my peripheral vision, the PE Teacher writing down on his note pad at that point… like marking down my 10 pull-ups… and I remember thinking, “that’s not right, is he CRAZY… I can do 11 pull-ups!!!

So I hung there from the bar, trying to do 11 pull-ups…and I pulled…and pulled. Nothing happened.
So I tried again. Nothing happened. My arms were burning. My arms were pulling. But they were not cooperating. All I did was hang there.

Finally the PE Teacher told me I was done, and asked me to get off the bar. But you see, he didn’t understand… I COULD DO 11 PULL-UPS!

So, I hung there pulling… until I fell off.

I didn’t do 11 pull-ups that day.

I did do 10 though. Which was twice as many as I’d ever done…

I got an amazing gift that day. The ability and the realization that I could actually make miracles come true… that I could do anything!

Oh and one more thing…within 30 days of this pull-up challenge…

I was able to do 20 pull-ups.

So here’s the deal. I want you to become so obsessed with something, that you start dreaming about it. I want you to try something that pushes the boundary of what you’ve accomplished before.

Without any limitations, I want you to go out and dream so much that you can get excited and then obsessed by your dream. Use the SEE IT, SAY IT, FEEL IT formula.

So for the next week, every single day, this is what you do, and how you challenge yourself.

Pick out something so cool, so big that it’ll makes your palm sweaty! Something that wakes you up like my daughter wakes up… in the middle of a dream that you’re so very excited about…

Dream a big, bold, brave, amazing new dream that gets you super excited… to go out and achieve.

‘Cause, let’s face it… if you do what you’ve always done before, if you dream the way, and set your goals the way you set them in the past… what’s gonna be different this year than … in all the years in the past?
Nothing’s gonna change.

So the first challenge I have for you about being great this year is just to DREAM.

That’s the discipline. That’s the challenge. I double-dog dare you to take that on.

This is about you, living out your dreams… about you daring to be great and becoming your best in your quest for greatness.

I’m talking about you giving yourself permission to dream like you’ve never done before, so that you can live a life where all your dreams come true.

First we need to see ourselves doing it. We feel it. Although of course my daughter did not literally fly around the room, the joy she exuded as she felt herself flying around the room was more than enough for her.

Whether my daughter believed in her ability to fly because of the books we read, and the stories we tell her, or that she has a family that adores and nurtures her… or just that perfect innocence of childhood… we should never abandon the child in ourselves.

We all need to become obsessed by things to light up our life. We need to dream, see and feel ourselves into reality.

So here we go. This is Trevor Crane, setting you out on your own greatness quest to become your best. And remember, as long as you are alive, you have the power to rise, to make your dreams come true.

So if you can look up, you can get up. So eyes up, chest up, step up and go out and take your life to the next level. I’ll see you again next week!

P.S. – My wife and daughter and I just got back from Disney World… and we saw those words right up there on the sky for the whole world to see…

Disney World – Where Dreams Come True.

MY LITTLE GIRL BELIEVES SHE CAN FLY…

AND I BELIEVE YOU CAN TO!