I read a quote once: “If you want your life to get better, YOU have to get better.” Getting where you want to get in life, business, relationships or just about anything begins with a vision. You have to visualize where you want to be.

Before you can move forward, you have to realize where you are. YOU are the one who made the individual choices that has brought you to where you are now. If you want to go somewhere else or be someone different, then YOU are the one that is going to make that happen. The only limitations are set by you. There is always a way to achieve your dream but the road is likely to be difficult. That’s what makes it worth it. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

If you want better customers and more sales then you have to become a better salesman and a better listener so you can understand what your customers really want. If you want better employees, then you need to be a better manager…the kind of leader that inspires people to excel. If you desire better relationships, than you have to become better yourself…more kind, more caring, more in tune with your partners needs.

When you look at the most successful people they all have at least one thing in common: they dreamt BIG. Some of them got to where they are by sheer luck but the vast majority of them got there through sheer willpower and drive. They made a big decision and then many, many smaller decisions propelled them to their success. There was a lot of work, to be sure, but none of that would have happened if they didn’t have the dream in the first place. Most of us are limited by ourselves. You have to decide that you are deserving of success and that the only limit is what you decide.

When you begin to dream big dreams, you begin to think of what is possible…what you can do and what you can become. This increases your self-esteem and self-confidence. It dramatically increases your ability to deal with the obstacles that are just a part of everyday life. The obstacles don’t go away but your ability to cope and move past them grows by leaps and bounds. The reason many people accomplish so little is because they never allow themselves to let go of the negativity and imagine the kind of life that they COULD lead.

Dreaming small is easy. It makes achieving our goals much simpler but when we dream small, we rob ourselves of the greatest of all questions: “What If?”

What if I found my perfect mate?

What if I became the CEO of a fortune 500 company?

What if I invented the next “Must Have” thing?

What if, What if, What if! Dreams are like a box but boxes have a finite amount of space. Once we use up all the space in our box, many of us decide that we have gone as far as we can go. We hit a ceiling of our own making. Many people, once their space is filled, simply accept that there is no more room and move on to find a different box and leaving everything else behind. Funny thing is, they often choose boxes that are all of similar size forever limiting themselves to particular amount of space to work within. Big boxes are created by dreaming big. The size of your box can be modified anytime. You are the one who decides how big your box is.

I greatly admire Michael Jordan. Most people only know him for his talent as a basketball player. Incredibly Michael was cut from his high school basketball team — a heartbreaking experience for any teenager but he didn’t let that stop him from achieving his dream of being the best ball player of all time. Jordan became one of the greatest basketball players in the history of the game and it was because he envisioned it long before it happened.

He is the author of one of my favorite quotes about failure: “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

He is also the author of a lesser-known quote that is equally powerful: “Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

WE are the only ones who decide how big our box is. Henry Ford said it best: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” Remove those self imposed limits and dream as big as you possibly can.