What You Dream Is What You Get

"If you don't have a vision of it, you won't get it." "You've got to see it before you can be it." Cliches? Yes. Accurate? You bet. 

In 1975 my wife, Lynne, first spoke of her attraction to the Rocky Mountains—sharing that someday she would like to have a mountain home. We talked about it frequently from then on. 

Ten years later, while in Colorado for a summer vacation, we decided to look at some property. We wanted to do some homework on what had by then become a vision of everyone in our family. We went to several open houses and absorbed a lot of information. The Colorado resort areas were in the middle of a serious property recession in the mid '80s, which gave us all the more desire to check out opportunities. 

Our eyes were bigger than our pocketbook. We couldn't afford our vision in 1985, but the family knew we had a Colorado destiny. We were preparing. 

It was during this trip that we first visited a new Summit County development called Summerwood. It was both beautiful and expensive—far too expensive for the Byrne family. We put Summerwood into the fantasy column. Maybe someday. 

Six months later, following a day's skiing, we visited an open house at a new development called Watch Hill. It had an inviting, panoramic mountain view, one of our priorities. Again, we couldn't justify spending what they were asking, but we liked what we saw. 

The Watch Hill unit we first looked at in February, 1986, was still new and unoccupied a year later. The price had come down, but not enough for our budget. We once again left Colorado with nothing but our vision of Watch Hill and our fantasy of Summerwood. We were sure the Watch Hill unit would sell before we were ready. 

We returned to Colorado again in August, 1987, for a brief vacation. We decided to rent a condo at the Watch Hill development we first saw 18 months earlier. On a whim, just a couple of days before going home, we decided to see if the corner unit we had looked at and liked was still for sale. We found it was—and at a substantially reduced price. 

The price change was so dramatic we couldn't pass it up. We bought our small condo at Watch Hill for a full 40 percent less than the price only 18 months earlier. While thoroughly enjoying our new mountain home at Watch Hill, we continued to play out our fantasy by returning every year or so to monitor the activities at Summerwood. 

The Byrne foursome visited Summerwood again in July, 1990, "just driving through." To our surprise, we saw an open house sign, so we walked in. We quickly got reacquainted with realtor Eddie O'Brien, who greeted us with "year after year after year." Eddie obviously remembered the Byrne family. He gave us a quick update. 

The property, sitting on a ridge 300 feet above Lake Dillon, was almost sold out. God wasn't going to make more of it. Our motivation was high. It looked like a now or never situation. We stretched our minds and our pocketbook. Before the day was over our fantasy came true. The wondrous view I had literally dreamed of over the past five years now belonged to my family. 

That evening Jason, Jenny, Lynne, and I sat down to discuss what makes dreams come true and how twice in three years we were at the right place at the right time. We concluded we had done our homework and had gathered substantial market knowledge. We also concluded that opportunity most often visits the prepared mind. 

I used to think everything I heard about imagery, visualization, and dreams coming true was a bunch of baloney. In recent years, however, my personal experience has proven I don't attain goals I don't have, and I don't fulfill dreams I don't dream. Our Colorado home is a testament to the value of dreaming the improbable dream. 

Our future will be as bright as we visualize it to be, or as dull as no vision at all. Good things really don't just happen. What we achieve is limited only by what we are able to visualize. We've got to see it before we can have it.