One key step to making your dream come true

There’s a house in my neighborhood that I just love.  It reminds me of a cross between the house from the Cartoon Network show Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, the house from the Pixar movie Up, and my grandparents’ old house.

Every day I pass by it, I think about whether I could actually live in it someday.  That’s my dream.

What if I could make my dream come true?  Let’s suspend the current reality for a moment and fast forward to a future where my dream comes true: I live in that house.  At that moment in time, as I look back to the present day and everything that happened in between, what were the actions I took and the choices I made to make that dream happen? 

The most useful concept I learned in undergrad

“So, I ask… any words of advice?”

I didn’t know what to write back.  I was excited by but also unprepared for the overwhelming response I got after my talk at UC Berkeley.  I poured out my story to a group of strangers, in hopes that they would open up and ask questions they may not have asked otherwise.  And they did ask.  But even after this one girl took a risk and poured out her own story into an email, I didn’t know how to answer her question.

I can talk about my own experience, and I can pass along advice that I’ve found helpful, but sometimes it seems like people really just want to know what they should do.

I can’t tell them. I wish I could, but it’s their decision to make.  The most that I can do is help people sort through their thoughts and help them come to a good decision, using one of the most useful concepts I learned in undergrad.

Decision analysis. I love this stuff.  According to Answers.com, decision analysis “offers individuals and organizations a methodology for making decisions.”