If You Can Dream it You Can Do It

If you can dream it, you can often do it, but not because dreaming is magic: a dream gives you a direction, and it’s the plan and the steady, unglamorous effort that actually get you there. And while the line is usually credited to Walt Disney, he didn’t say it, though his life is a fine example of what it really takes.

We all have a dream we’ve shelved. The business we keep sketching on napkins. The degree we decided we were too old for. The move, the book, the career change. It sits there, a little dusty, and every so often we take it down, look at it fondly and put it back.

Usually we tell ourselves it’s being realistic. Sometimes it is. But often it’s just fear wearing sensible shoes. So let’s look at this famous line honestly: where it came from, what it gets right, and what it leaves out.

Who really said “If you can dream it, you can do it”?

If You Can Dream it You Can Do It

Often attributed to Walt Disney. Written by Disney Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald for Epcot’s Horizons attraction.

You’ll see this line on posters, mugs and office walls with Walt Disney’s name under it. But Disney’s own archivist, Dave Smith, checked it, and Tom Fitzgerald confirmed that he wrote it for Horizons, a ride about the future that opened at Epcot in 1983, nearly 17 years after Walt Disney died. Fitzgerald has said he finds the mix-up amusing.

We like the line more, not less, for knowing this. It wasn’t a lucky thought from one genius. It was written by someone doing his job well, as part of a team building something that took years. Which is rather the point.

Try this: write your shelved dream down in one plain sentence, in your own words. “I want to open a small bakery” beats “Follow your passion.”

What Walt Disney’s story actually teaches

Walt Disney was born in Chicago on December 5, 1901, and his early career was anything but a straight line. In Kansas City, where he worked as a young commercial artist and met his long-time collaborator Ub Iwerks, his first animation studio went bankrupt in 1923. He moved to Hollywood that same year and started what became the Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy.

A few years later he and Iwerks created a hit character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Then, in 1928, Disney discovered that Universal owned the rights to Oswald, and he lost the character and most of his animators in one blow. Out of that loss came Mickey Mouse.

So yes, he dreamed big. But the real story is a bankruptcy, a painful business lesson and a decision to keep working anyway. Dreams plus plans plus effort, with a few setbacks in the middle. Not magic.

Try this: think of one setback you’ve already survived. Write down what you learned from it that you could use for your dream.

Why a dream on its own isn’t enough

Here’s the honest bit that the posters leave out. Simply picturing a happy ending can make us less likely to chase it. In experiments by psychologists Heather Barry Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen, positive fantasies about an ideal future sapped people’s energy, as if the mind had already collected the reward.

What seems to help instead is pairing the dream with a clear look at what’s in the way, and then making an if-then plan. A meta-analysis of this approach, called mental contrasting with implementation intentions, found a small to moderate boost to reaching goals. Not a miracle. A real, usable nudge.

So keep dreaming. Just don’t stop at the dreaming.

Try this (five minutes): write your dream, the best outcome, the main obstacle inside you (“I lose steam after work”), and one if-then plan (“If it’s 7 pm and I feel tired, then I’ll do just 15 minutes”).

Why do we stop dreaming big?

As children we live in fairy tales and dragons. As we grow, our dreams turn more practical, and the big ones begin to feel light-years away. So we shrink them. We tell ourselves we’re not good enough, not qualified enough, that it’s too risky. We play small.

The trouble is that without something to reach for, life can start to feel flat. We end up spending our energy on small problems, and sometimes on blaming other people for a life we never really chose.

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Lawrence’s distinction is the useful one. Night dreams are wishes. Day dreams, in his sense, are dreams you look at with your eyes open and then act on. That’s the kind worth having, and it’s the kind this whole article is about.

Try this: ask yourself, “If I knew I couldn’t fail, what would I try?” Then ask, “What’s the smallest version of that I could try anyway?”

Give yourself an aim

We believe everyone deserves a purpose or a challenge that’s theirs: something they want to accomplish for themselves, not for applause. It doesn’t need to be grand. Learning to swim at 50 counts. So does finishing the quilt.

An aim gives our days a shape. It also makes the hard parts feel worth it, because you know what they’re for. And growth, as we’ve written before, tends to come from the things that challenge us.

Try this: choose one aim for the next 90 days and put it somewhere you’ll see it every morning.

Check the dream against your reality

A thought rarely becomes real on its own. Having a dream is the start of the process. The next step is an honest look at where you are: your time, your money, your health, your energy, the people who depend on you. Some of us start from a comfortable place. Others have to struggle first and settle in later. Both are allowed.

Once you’ve weighed your dream against your current situation, you can plan a route that fits. Ambition is wonderful. Clarity keeps it from burning out. And if your dream comes wrapped in a few unhelpful beliefs, our piece on the myths about pursuing big dreams may help you untangle them.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.

Marie Curie

Her daughter Eve recorded these words in her 1937 biography of her mother, where the full line adds that the thing must be attained “at whatever cost”. Notice that they don’t pretend it’s easy. They ask for two things in the same breath: stamina and self-belief. You need both on the days the plan isn’t working.

Try this: list three resources you already have (a skill, a contact, an hour on Sunday) and one you’ll need. Write down the first step towards getting it.

Take small steps, and keep taking them

Based on your plan, start taking small steps in the same direction, so that each day you’re a little closer than the day before. The path will have rocky stretches. Giving up often looks most tempting right when you’re nearest the goal, which is exactly when to keep your head down and keep going.

Along the way, nurture other qualities too: perseverance, honesty, discipline and creativity. And resist the shortcut that costs someone else. A dream reached by hurting people tends to feel hollow when you get there. The better route is to help others towards their goals as you work on yours, without keeping score.

When things go wrong, and some things will, remember that failing is part of the process, not proof you should stop. We’ve written more about the reality about failing if you need a steadier view of it.

Try this: put one 20-minute block in your calendar this week, labelled with your dream, and protect it like a meeting.

Dare to think bigger

From aeroplanes to cash machines, so much of what we now take for granted began as someone’s slightly eccentric idea, and their nerve to actually build it. Every entrepreneur, scientist and artist you admire started with a little skill, a few supporters and a very large dream.

That’s worth remembering when we talk to children, too. In trying to give them a safe future, we can squeeze out the curiosity and imagination that are their greatest strengths. Give them room to dream, and give yourself the same room.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

You’ll often see this one credited to Mark Twain, but there’s no evidence he said it, and it appears in H. Jackson Brown Jr.’s 1990 book. Whoever said it first, it’s a nudge for the moment you’re standing at the edge of the harbour, tempted to stay tied up.

Try this: tell one person you trust about your dream this week. Saying it out loud makes it real.

What to take home from this

Dreams are sparks of motivation. They give us the courage to take calculated risks. But working towards a goal takes patience, a plan, and people around us who can help us bounce back when we fall.

We believe the line on the poster is true, just incomplete. If you can dream it, you can work towards it, one honest step at a time, and that is how almost everything worth having gets done. The next time you dream, dream with your eyes open. Then take the first step.

You’ve got this. And we’ll be cheering you on.

What’s the dream you’ve been keeping on the shelf? Tell us in the comments.