"Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence

In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus says to Neo, "Sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

While the entire movie is a fantastic metaphor for what our dreams are made of and how to truly live them, this quote is at the heart of it all.

No matter how much we dream, whether it's during the day or night, the dreams are still in our heads. The dreams are representative of what we think consciously and subconsciously.

And while our dreams have power, that power is only potential power until we put it to use in the world. These are the dreams that are "by night, in the dusty recesses" of minds. If for nothing else, because they are not real, they are not manifested.  Once those dreams are put into action though, that potential energy becomes actualized in the real world. We begin to bring forth those dreams in physical, real, and meaningful ways.

In this way, what we really discover is that the difference in our world is the gap between dreaming and doing. It very literally is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path. The dreamers continue wishing, hoping, wanting for things to change. They see a world they want to live in yet for one reason or another don't do what it takes to create that world. Their self-imposed limitations prevent them from "waking up" from the dream.

The doers on the other hand are changing the world by storm...

Whether they're like Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta, the public school teachers who tirelessly create a new world through their students, or billionaire entrepreneurs who use money as a form of social change...

These are the doers who took risks to go beyond their dreams and make those dreams become reality. They all started with a single step, and put one foot in front of the other, to change things proactively and create the world they want to live in.

In this way, the doers present a very real "danger" to the status quo. They shake up the ideas and paradigms by which most people live. In fact, this very shaking is what dreamers fear most.  Not necessarily because the dreamers become jealous of the doers (though that is often true), but because the doers create a world in which the dreamers can no longer stay asleep dreaming. Even then the dreamers must awaken, if for nothing else, to change positions and go back to sleep.

In your own life, the choice is always there: to dream or do. The dream is always a good start. It is an important and necessary start. However, when the dreams stay just dreams, your potential will wither away and die in the deep subconsciously fearful recesses of your mind. The dream will disappear as quickly as it appeared.  Or, you take the next step and bring that dream into the real world. In this way, you are no longer just a dreamer or a doer. You are both. You create the dream, embrace the dream, and you give it the life it needs to become real.

You become the dream.

Still, no matter what path you take, never mistake the dream for the actions needed to manifest that dream.

Remember Morpheus' words, "There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." Remember that, and you will discover how simple it can be to bring your dreams to life