You’re reading How To Dream Specifically, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
There’s a concept in sailing called velocity made good, or VMG for short. Because a sailboat cannot point directly into the wind and make any forward progress, you have to sail at an angle to the wind. So VMG is the speed that you’re actually making toward your destination.
For instance, as part of a round the world sailing trip I took with my family, we wanted to sail from Panama to the Galapagos. Our speed looked great on the surface, but there were forces holding us back. The most obvious was that the wind was coming directly from where we wanted to go. To make any forward progress, we had to sail at a forty-degree angle to the wind (called tacking), so we were doing a massive zigzag toward our destination. That quickly turns a six hundred-mile passage into a twelve-hundred-mile passage. The wind was also unseasonably light, so we just weren’t sailing fast enough.
However, perhaps the most disheartening force working against us was the one we couldn’t see. There were strong currents under the surface of the sea that were literally pushing us back. So while the boat felt as though she was moving forward across the surface of the ocean, we were actually making very little progress.
The same thing has a tendency to occur in our day-to-day lives: Our VMG just isn’t good enough. We have our eyes on a goal, or a dream, and yet there are forces—both seen and unseen—working against our realizing those dreams.
A key question to ask yourself to begin counteracting those forces is this: Do I really know where I am heading, and where I want to go? Said another way—how am I dreaming?
If you are like most folks—you have a dream. In fact, you have lots of dreams, and yet, the chances are that they are not specific at all. Almost by default, your VMG toward them will be poor.
Dreams, like wanting to be successful in business, wanting to retire rich or early, wanting to be happier, or wanting to have a strong marriage are all vague. Each is lacking specific detail about not only how you’ll arrive at that goal but also what the dream specifically means. What does it mean to you to be happy? How much do you require in your savings account to fund a comfortable retirement? “I want to have a successful career” is a dream that almost everyone has, but people who are specific about defining what success means to them, how they will get there, and by when are far more likely to achieve the dream.
Without specifics, all these dreams lack “teeth”; they are vague. Because they are vague, they open the door for you to focus on the obstacles, fears, and dreads. Ultimately, these negatives get so overwhelming that they paralyze you and prevent you from ever achieving your dream. Your VMG toward that dream will stall altogether, and the likelihood is high that you won’t achieve it. That’s what I mean when I say you’ll die full of potential. You could have achieved something that was important to you during the course of your lifetime, but you didn’t.
Back to the theory of VMG. You are not always sailing against a current when you set sail, and you do not always have to tack back and forth because the wind is coming directly from your destination. Sometimes, the wind is on your beam, (coming across the side of the boat). This typically enables your boat to sail along nice and fast. And sometimes, the current is actually accelerating your progress toward your destination. Your boat’s instruments indicate you are sailing along at seven knots, but your VMG—because of the current—is actually twelve. That doesn’t sound like much of a difference—but in a sailboat, it is massive, cutting the time to your destination almost in half—a really big deal! It’s the difference between taking eighteen days to cross the Atlantic and taking ten and a half days. Metaphorically, this is precisely what happens when you change the way you dream. Instead of dreaming in a way that enables all your specific fears, dreads, and obstacles to paralyze you, you need to dream specifically. With this approach, you will be much better equipped to simply deal with all the fears, dreads, and obstacles—one at a time as they arise.
This changes the conversation entirely. One of the positive side effects of this approach is that it places you much more firmly in the driver’s seat. You have made a specific choice, and you are taking the necessary steps to make it happen. You are no longer a victim of circumstance. All of the more difficult decisions will be easier because they have context—they are all enablers for you to achieve your specific dream.
Jeremy Cage is President of The Cage Group, which focuses on unleashing the full potential of businesses and people. He has held senior management positions at Procter and Gamble and PepsiCo; has lived and worked in Sweden, England, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and the United States; and took sixteen months to sail around the world with his family. Cage is also co-founder of several start-up companies in the areas of healthy foods and nutrition. You can learn more at: http://www.thecagegroup.org.
You’ve read How To Dream Specifically, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Powerhouse carefully fits a dense cluster of 31 units into Philadelphia’s Francisville neighborhood fabric, providing single family townhomes, duplexes, and two small apartment buildings that meet the needs and budgets of residents with a wide variety of living options at a range of prices.
Francisville is a rapidly gentrifying edge between an expanding Center City core and outlying Philadelphia neighborhoods. Development here has the opportunity to provide variety and diversity in keeping with the character of the community around it. The site strategy for Powerhouse allows infill to grow to blockfill, addressing neighborhood scale with added density and street life.
The cluster of buildings wraps an urban corner, navigating existing buildings on a sloping site by varying typologies and scales across the block. Three existing rowhouses were integrated into the streetwall, inspiring an in-and-out jog along the sidewalk that looks to camouflage the old and new into a single zone.
Powerhouse is deeply green as architecture and as an urban block. Stormwater is completely managed by way of green roofs and rain gardens along the curb line, taking in water from the street surface. The buildings themselves are super energy-efficient with all 31 units achieving LEED Platinum certification.
The stoop is a traditional Philadelphia condition that acts as a mediator between the public sidewalk and the private residence. This project expands on this idea with a “super stoop” – a sequence of generous entry platforms navigating grade changes, entry stairs, and basement windows, and featuring fabricated metal handrail panels designed by a local artist..
London-based Dutch architect Matthijs Ia Roi has won the Belgian Monument Competition with his proposal, Museum of Hospitality, which will be built in Amersfoort, Netherlands.
The museum will serve as a symbol of hospitality for refugees in the Netherlands and will compliment the neighboring World War I monument, which was a gift from Belgium in recognition of the Netherlands hosting Belgian soldiers during the war.
The ‘Museum of Hospitality’ acts as an exhibition pavilion next to the current monument. It tells the story of the Belgian refugees during World War I with the intention of drawing parallels to today’s refugee crisis as well. It will stand as a reminder to future generations of the importance of providing hospitality to those in need, said the architects on a press release.
The pavilion will feature two masses, each of which will host a small exhibition space—the first area will detail the Belgian refugee crisis in the Netherlands during World War I, and the second space will exhibit 100 years of refugee hospitality in the Netherlands from World War I onwards.
Inspired by the “Amsterdam-style” of the existing monument, the building’s form mimics the plasticity of masses essential to the style through movement and pliancy. Furthermore, the new building will utilize the same brick and limestone as the existing monument.
Construction on Museum of Hospitality is set to complete in 2019.
News via: Matthijs Ia Roi.
Cameras are the only way to safely see a caribou – also known as a reindeer – this close! More than half a million caribou migrate in summer and winter through the Central Brooks Range, which crosses Alaska’s Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. As they travel, caribou bring gifts to the land and those who depend on it, shaping plant communities by grazing and providing food for people and other wildlife like bears and wolverines. Looks like this reindeer is resting up for the big ride tonight. Photo by Zak Richter, National Park Service.
“Welcome to the white forest” 📸: @winshi.wong in Ottawa !
Share your shots with us ! #travelcanada
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#canada #explorecanada #ottawa #ontario #exploreontario #snow #winter #winterscene #winterwonderland #trees #adventure #nature #destination #wanderlust #cityscape #viewsaddict #stateofshots #visualsoflife #hike #hiking #instagood #instadaily (at Ottawa, Ontario)
‘Tis the season for offices from around the world to send us a bit of holiday cheer! See our favorites below (or check out our reader-submitted cards).
Here’s to a wonderful, architecture-filled 2017!
Happy Holidays from the ArchDaily team!
“Structure as space designer”
Structure stops hiding behind the drawing and comes out to participate as the main character of the play.
Based on the structure performance, everything occurs. The stage combines different but simple lines, materials, forms and senses.
Four concrete porticoes are set in the edges of the structure creating three real and imaginary longitudinal spaces.
In the front the access yard, where beams emerge. Inside the house, the scene develops in freedom, delimited by containing planes. Finally, at the end of the non-disturbing crossing beams the gallery appears as the last scenography.
The house is located in a small scale residential zone which is recently developed. This site is situated on a corner and is 14 x 30 meters, with a total of 402m2.
Project must adapt to a young couple needs. Thus the house was thought to be built in two different time stages: first, a studio apartment (fully functional nowadays) that will became the dining room in the future. Then bedrooms will be added in the front part of the plot.
The already built studio apartment was designed across the plot, keeping utilities package facing south; bathroom, kitchen and a small laundry space with independent access from the backyard.
Behind a permeable grid wall, the medium scale front yard was thought as a soft transition feeling between theoutside and the inside of the house.
Same goal was set for the gallery that merges the studio apartment with the green backyard. Besides, glass transparencies predominance contributes to soften even more the edges.
Chosen material were simple and austere. Bare concrete to highlight columns and beams structure that crosses the house from side to side.
Below structure height, white wallswork as partial lateral covers. Finally, generous aluminum joinery completes the triad.
Inside the house textures are aligned: polished cement floor cover, reinforced concrete kitchen counter and calcareous lining in the bath, kitchen and laundry.
Venice Beach – California – USA (by Passion Leica)
💙 Chilly on 500px by Aleksey Yelizarov, Kiev, Ukraine☀ NIKON… http://ift.tt/2aeM3O5
Sig Nordal 