When I think about motivation the image in my head involves trains. I have always loved trains, perhaps because they remind me of my Dad. Every Christmas he would set up the Lionel trains, the big ones, with three rails, to circle around the Christmas tree and all over the living room. I’m sure it drove my Mom crazy, making her living room such a cluttered mess, but she was a good sport, since it only happened once a year.

In my image of motivation, I see a string of cars in a siding. There are box cars, tankers, refrigerator cars and flat cars. They are just sitting there, sitting there going nowhere. The goods inside the cars are stuck in the siding. Being stuck in the siding they aren’t doing anyone any good; they have no value so long as they stay in the siding.

Then the locomotive comes along, and backs into the siding. It hooks up to the cars, reverses its engines, and pulls those cars out of the siding. It pulls those cars into the city and into the markets in the city. Once the goods in the cars get into the market, they can be bought and sold; they have value.

This is the same thing that happens with motivation. The cars represent your dreams. As long as they are stuck in the sidings of your mind, they are without value; they are merely dreams, merely wishful thinking.

But hook those dreams up to motivation and bring them to the market place, and suddenly they have value. They become more than dreams, they become real!

Dreams can be wonderful in their own right; they can make life more fun, more tolerable. But how much better is a dream that is valuable, that is coming true.

Add motivation to your dreams, and make them real.