Fulfilling Your Dreams

by Michael Murphy

In 1985, I had my first encounter with a 'personal computer'. The PC was actually introduced on the open market 4 years earlier. At the time, I was working for my uncle in Dallas, Texas.

One day, as I was sitting there performing my regular duties, I first encountered the 'find and replace' function in the word processing program. Not long after that, I had an idea that was to germinate in my heart and mind for the next 21 years.

Back in 1975, I had a spiritual awakening that transformed my life. A young, 17 year old rebellious boy, I awoke to a bigger and better purpose and direction for my life. Not long afterward, I was introduced to the burgeoning personal development and self help world.
I began devouring books by Norman Vincent Peale, Dr. Robert Schuller, Zig Ziglar, Charlie 'T' Jones, Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, Maxwell Maltz and anyone else's books I could get my hands on. I read 'See You At The Top', 'How To Win Friends and Influence People', 'The Success System That Never Fails', 'Think and Grow Rich' and others. I listened to the great audio recording of Earl Nightingale's, 'The Strangest Secret' over and over again.

I embarked on a journey that has brought me to a place of living a dream that was born during those early formative adult years.

I learned the power and results of affirmations from many of these great success teachers. I found and carefully studied Dr. Shad Helmstetter's book, 'What To Say When You Talk To Yourself'. For those first 17 years, most of my mental, psychological and spiritual programming had been negative. Now I found myself thrust into the amazing message that I was finding every place that I searched.

As I worked on the word processing program and started understanding its functions, I had a dream of taking inspiring and spiritual verses from the Bible and inserting my name into every powerful promise of success, prosperity and greatness. I also imagined what it would be like to do this same thing for others in order to empower, encourage and equip them to be all that their hearts desired and imagined.

The great Henry David Thoreau said, 'Most men live lives of quiet desperation'. They live that way because deep down inside they know that they are here for a more powerful purpose than they are presently experiencing. I believe that the reason most men feel the need to express anger and aggression is born out of this more spiritual need of living out a greater destiny and purpose. They become frustrated in not living what they were designed for.

What I saw in the personal development and self help teachings was that they collectively possessed the keys to a man living out his purpose and destiny.

Each of us were born for the purpose of living out a destiny far greater than we've ever experienced. We dream. We hope. We have longings to be more, do more and have more. Yet we've not been given a road map of how to get 'from where we are to where we long in our hearts, to go.'

As my purpose for having been born, became more clear, I was discovering that my gifts and talents were in expressing through writing and public speaking, that each one can and should realize his dreams. My gifting was founded in the ability to encourage and empower people to dare to dream and dare to go after their dreams in their lives.

I've always found it part of my mission and gifting to be able to directly speak to someone and acknowledge their greatness, abilities, talents and potential to live out their own innate greatness. I recognized how little most people are directly told that they possess the seeds of greatness and success.

I was raised in an era that most authority figures perceived that you didn't give direct encouragement to others. There was some kind of fear of 'over inflating their egos'. It was as if the more you could discourage a person from stepping out of the box of 'normal accepted living', then somehow that was in itself virtuous.

Thus, I saw a vast need to fill that gap that was created by wrong thinking. I knew that as others were directly encouraged to be, do and have all that they've imagined, that you were in fact equipping and empowering them to pursue it.

My dream in 1985 was to some day, publish books of personal empowerment and encouragement. I mean 'personal' in that, every empowering statement would be directed to that person by name. I realized how easy it was to accomplish this with even the first, more primitive work processing programs. My ultimate dream was to publish books, one at a time, that would give an individual the tool to build their self-esteem, self-confidence, faith and personal belief in their potential and destiny.

It was not until the summer of 2006 that I discovered the means to accomplish what had lain in my heart for over 20 years.

Upon publishing my first book, "Powerful Attitudes", I met an author and professional editor, Joyce Shafer, who told me about 'print on demand' publishing. I had heard of it before but knew little about it. I embarked upon a quest to learn all I could about it. In the process, I found the key to what I sought for over 20 years. I found the means to publish personalized books with the reader's name embedded directly in the text of a bound book. I found the tool that I had long sought to embed your name directly into the text of powerful and life transforming positive and spiritual affirmations.

What had previously been unheard of, I discovered in print on demand publishing a means, not only to accomplish what I had dreamed of for 20 years, but a way to do it and make the end product, a personalized, book of spiritual promises and positive empowering affirmations, at a cost that would make it affordable for almost anyone. 'Print on demand' publishing provided the means to allow me to fulfill what I had long sought.

There are lessons to be learned in my journey in living out one's purpose. Here are the lessons I
learned in just this one pursuit of 20 years.

1. If you have a dream that you can't seem to get rid of, then you are being called to pursue it and make it a reality.2. You are here for a greater purpose than you are now living. If you feel the frustration and 'desperation' that Thoreau described, then you need to get your dreams out, take them off of the shelf, dust them off and begin to dream them again.3. If a vision has been given to you to accomplish, whatever your heart's desire might be, then, 'there is a way to see it come into your experience of reality'. There is a way, even if you see none presently, for you to fulfill and live out your dream.

My hope and prayer for you is that you dream big, take massive action and live out your dreams. If the dream that you possess has been put into your heart, then you can and will fulfill it. As one great teacher told me, 'Don't give up, don't give in and don't give out'.
If no one else understands your dream, then recognize that it is 'your' dream, not 'theirs'. Look deep within yourself to find the key to unlocking your amazing destiny. When I've talked about 'personalized books' for the past 20 years, I've had people look at me as if I had just landed a spaceship from another galaxy. That's o.k. Your dream is unique to you. The only way that your dream will become a reality is if you continue to dream it, believe it and see it all the way through.

Had I known that if my dream was going to be 20 years in being fulfilled, I'm sure that I would have abandoned it many years ago. However, I found within myself this amazing gift called 'hope'. I hung on to that hope until I saw it become a reality.

Even though you and I may only meet here in these few paragraphs that you've taken the time to absorb, I want to say something to you directly.

I want you to know that you can live your dreams. I want you to know that if your pursuit has been something that you've dreamed of and sometimes, despaired over, then, you've likely found at least a piece of your destiny. You can do it. You can fulfill it. You can believe in yourself. You can discover the 'how' to fulfill it. Believe in yourself. And know this. I believe in you. I believe in your great power to accomplish your goals and live your dreams.

My hope and my prayer is that I can inspire and encourage you by my life's pursuits in order for you to keep going and resolve to live out your dreams.


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