If you are considering setting New Year's resolutions, here's an alternative: This year, go for your dreams!

Do you dream of doing less and having more? Would you like to be more successful and less stressed out? How about being healthier or in better shape? Do you want more quality time with friends and family? How about a new job, more passion, more money, even more fun?

Dreams like these, which are based on what you want, have far more chance of survival than your resolutions, which are based on what you don't want. Why? Because your dreams and desires have more power than your doubts and dislikes.

There's a different kind of energy and joy when you are moving toward your dreams than there is when you are trying to "fix" something. For example, if your dream is to feel and look good, a different kind of energy will be applied than to the drudgery of getting rid of the weight by diet and exercise. "Getting a healthier, more vibrant body" will be easier than "losing weight." Similarly, "building a successful business" will be more exciting than "getting rid of debt."

Set up your life to move toward what you want. By taking a little time to dream, you can reconnect to your passion and to what really matters to you. Explore how you want the next year of your life to be, and find the courage and confidence to make it happen.

Where You Are vs. Where You Want to Be
As you begin to gain clarity about where you want to be in life, it is important that you also look at your current reality. The road to your dreams starts here. In order to design a successful strategy for getting what you want, you need to know two things: where you are and where you want to be.

It's important to honestly assess where you are now because starting with inaccurate information will lead to erroneous decisions about what has to be done -- and how far you have to go -- to reach your dream. For example, where are you currently with respect to the personal, professional, health and family aspects of your life? What concerns do you have in these areas? Do you worry that going for your dream will take more time than there is available? Perhaps you don't believe that it's possible to make your dream come true. All this is part of your reality, too.

No doubt you will find that you're at a different place within each aspect of your life -- closer to your dream in some areas and farther away from it in others. That's a typical pattern. The critical question becomes whether you're more committed to being where you are or to getting where you want to go.

Dreaming Big vs. Thinking Small
Without our dreams, all we have is reality. And although reality is an essential part of the process, if you are overly realistic, you will minimize your dreams.

Similarly, once you're focused on a dream, you will need to strategize on how to accomplish it. But if you strategize too quickly, you may compromise the dream. Though the realist in you may want to know where the time or money is going to come from, you may not have it all figured out in the early phases. And that's OK, because if you live primarily focused on problem-solving, most of your energy will go toward fixing what wrong or getting rid of what you don't want -- and your passion may be squelched in the process. Thus, it's a useful practice to embellish and enhance the dream for a while before considering the nuts and bolts of how you are going to accomplish it.

Sabotaging Your Dream
In the early phases of a dream, there may be no evidence that your dream is a good idea. Or for a big dream, there may be no evidence that this is the right time to execute it. But it is your believing in it, talking about it, and acting upon it that will make it real. What often stop us from taking action are our limiting beliefs, the biggest of which is fear. As you become aware of what you believe and what is stopping you, you can make better choices.

Attitudes and beliefs such as fear and doubt are never neutral; they either move you forward or hold you back. But what most of us forget is that we choose what we believe. If your dream is to start your own business but you believe that it will be too hard or that you might fail, your thoughts and feelings will concur that this is a bad idea, and your decision might be to forget about it. But the same dream with a belief such as "I can do this" or "I believe in my dream," will take you to thoughts and feelings of excitement and hope, and ultimately to the choice to go for it, or at least to explore it.

Let me make this essential point very clear: The No. 1 way we sabotage our dreams is by projecting our fears, doubts and concerns into our dreams. Your concerns don't belong in your dream; they're part of where you are now, not where you're going. Deal with them by simply getting clear about what they are, designing a strategy for managing them, and asking for help.

You Choose
Kahlil Gibran in "The Prophet" said, "Doubt is a feeling too lonely to know that Faith is its twin brother."

You make the choice. One belief will move you toward what you want, and the other will move you away. Which do you choose? If you choose to believe in your dream or self, you must be willing to demonstrate that you believe in your dream by taking action.

In today's economy, the complaint I hear expressed too often is, "I don't have enough money to pursue my dream." So I ask, "How much do you need?"

I'll bet you can guess the common response: "I don't know how much I need, but I know I don't have enough."

The fact is that money is not usually what stops us, but rather the fear of not having enough. We too often kill off our dreams before we explore the possibilities of where they might take us or how we might get there. Don't say "no" before you explore "yes."

Your dream begins to take on life as you envision it, speak about it, and act on it. As you open yourself up to unlimited possibilities, amazing things begin to happen. Follow through on your intentions as you "walk your talk." Be a visionary. A visionary has a vision or a dream, articulates it with clarity and passion, gets others excited about it, and invites them to play. Dream big, share your dreams, and remind others to do the same.

As America