I was talking to a few friends of mine recently about getting a group together … a “Success Mastermind Group”, and the topic came up around how we could protect ideas.

The thing is … and I learned this from a major rockstar startup founder… taking an idea and making it into a business is really, REALLY, freakin’ hard.  It’s so hard that you can take an idea, and share it with the world…and all the best startup founders…and it still may never amount to anything.

What makes an idea valuable?  Action.

An idea without action is just a temporary blip of neurons firing in your brain – and then it’s gone… maybe a memory.

Same thing goes for your DREAMS.  Dreams are just thoughts or ideas related to YOU or something you care about.

Dreams of what could be, what you could do, what you could become.

Dreams without action are just more temporary blips of neurons firing in YOUR brain…

The only way to make your dreams real is… you guessed it… Action.

More specifically… YOU… YOU TAKING ACTION.

There’s an interesting twist.  You don’t have to be striving toward YOUR OWN GOAL in order to take action and be successful.

You don’t have to wait for the right idea.  You don’t have to wait to believe in your dreams.

I recently read The Surrender Experiment, by Michael A. Singer.

Here’s about the shortest summary I can muster:

Michael Singer went from living in a van parked by a lake, by choice, with the only intention of meditating and practicing yoga in order to find enlightenment.  When some kind of opportunity was presented to him, or there was some kind of congruency he picked up on, he followed it curiously.  It was not always in alignment with HIS thoughts about where HE wanted to go, but he chose to let go.. to surrender…with the feeling that something higher… life.. God…something was leading the unfolding.  Life was living through him, instead of him trying to impose his will on life.  The book is a page turner of what others would chalk up to coincidence, where his surrendering to life took him from homeless to CEO of a $300M company.  He went from camping on someone else’s land, to owning over 900 acres surrounding the area where he used to live in his van.

None of his success and amazing life stories came from his ambition to fulfill something for himself.  His only dream was to reach enlightenment and serve the purpose life put in front of him.

That’s the most amazing twist on things – he took Action to follow life’s intention.

Does this mean that you cannot follow your dreams or work to make ideas become a reality?  Of course not.  Who’s to say that your thoughts and dreams are not part of life’s (or God’s) overall intention?

Your dreams can be a source of passion… an energy to help drive you overcome the challenges you’ll face in life.

In the end, action is what matters.  It’s the bridge between your ideas and life.  Action is the ability you have to manifest your ideas.

So … what dreams do you have… what amazing ideas are waiting… waiting for you to make them real?