In one of my programs, I centered the conversation around the concept,“If you can dream it, you can do it.” Probably it is one of Walt Disney’s most oft quoted statements.

While oft quoted, I don’t think we think long enough and hard enough about what that quotation means. Most draw the conclusion that anything you can dream of you are capable of doing. Perhaps if we turned this quote around, we might see this quotation with new eyes: “If you can do it, you can dream it.” What I’m suggesting is that those who have the focus and discipline to do something, have the focus and discipline to dream the impossible.

Let me put it another way. Al Hirschfield was well known as the American caricaturist who celebrated Broadway’s best through drawing. To Disney fans, Al’s work was the inspiration for the George Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue New York scene in Fantasia 2000. As one who knew something about art and creativity all his life, he made the following statement:

I think there is a discipline for not only making dreams come true, but in coming up with the dream itself. Any one can come up with an idea, but a dream is true mental creation.  Do you have ideas? Or do you have dreams? Have you labored over that dream until it is a mental creation in your mind? If you have the mental discipline to spiritually create something completely through, you probably possess the discipline to physically create it.

If doing requires dreaming, what is needed for dreaming? Walt Disney stated, “All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.” Why courage? Does that mean that if I’m cowardly, I can’t dream. Rulio May best answers that question: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice. It is conformity.”

Do you have courage not to conform? Do you have dreams, not ideas? If you do, then stand back–you may just do it!