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Plan A is your reason for being—knowing what you want in work and life and going after it. Plan A leads to passion, fulfillment, excellence, and abundance.

Plan B is being in a situation, going through the motions, knowing you're not happy.

You’re able to pay the bills—you may even be wealthy—but there is still a sense of scarcity. Plan B leads to boredom, restlessness, disillusionment, and mediocrity.

-- Diane L. Samuels

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Have you ever had a dream that you longed to pursue—only, instead of going after it, you made sure that you had a back-up plan and put most of your energy, time, and resources into that plan instead of into realizing your dream?

I have a passion for watching biographies on TV. One night while watching yet another story of someone who had achieved his or her dream, I had an “Aha!” moment. It hit me that these dreams hadn’t come true by luck. And these people weren’t overnight successes—there is no such thing! Rather, what they all had in common is that they made their dreams a reality by refusing to get sidetracked by a Plan B. Sometimes that meant living in their car with “a hatchet and a bottle of Jack Daniels to fall asleep at night”, like Mad Money's Jim Cramer. One of the most famous people who went after her Plan A dream after hitting rock bottom is Tina Turner. She knew with all her heart that she was meant to be an entertainer and drew on her reserve of courage to leave her abusive husband one night, beaten and with nothing to her name but the change in her pockets and the clothes on her back. But she went on to rebuild her career and take it further than ever.

They never took their eyes off of their Plan A prize. They refused to let naysayers dissuade them. They refused to allow the hard knocks of life compel them to give up. They stayed the course, sticking to their Plan A, even and especially when they couldn’t see how they were going to get from where they were to where they wanted to be. They just knew that the ONLY possible way of getting there was following their Plan A, no matter what.

Is there something that you’ve always dreamed of doing? Do you have a new dream you want to pursue? Are there any naysayers in your life? When you think about the struggles of people like Tina Turner and Jim Kramer do you believe you can overcome the voices of the naysayers?

Share your thoughts and comments. Let’s start a Plan A community, an ongoing conversation. I invite you to stop by this blog often, to see what others have to say and to read my blog posts about Living Your Plan A.

www.LiveYourPlanA.com