Living With Purpose : Realizing Your Dreams

Living With Purpose : Realizing Your Dreams This week's featured guest is Melissa Borghorst. Since her childhood, Melissa Borghorst has been dreaming up fun and exciting things to accomplish in her lifetime. In 1997, she was given a blank writing journal as a gift. Instead of limiting her journal entries to the usual documentation of daily activities, she decided to test the boundaries of her imagination by detailing her future aspirations, big and small. She created the first dream list photo journal, filled with adventures she hadn’t done…yet. The journal started with an extravagant dream list of all the things she’d like to do in her lifetime. As she accomplished each one—skydiving, river rafting, riding in a hot air balloon, backpacking across Europe, snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef—she documented the event in her journal with a photo and short journal entry. She soon had a personalized book of her treasured memories to inspire her to continue to follow her dreams. As she shared her journal with friends and family, the idea caught on and soon many others were creating their own dream list photo journals. As more people expressed their desire to create their own journals, Melissa decided to spread the word on a larger scale. She led a Dream List Photo Journal workshop in a 6th grade classroom, teaching kids how to organize their ideas and to break their big dreams into smaller goals that they can start accomplishing now. The youngsters quickly picked up on the idea and started accomplishing amazing things. Year after year Melissa visited new classrooms to teach more kids how to follow through and accomplish their dreams. Throughout this process, she realized that these journals, and the opportunity to inspire and improve lives, were her true passion and most important, her dream.