Every person throughout his life creates for himself a certain image of goals and dreams. People cannot live without imagining their future, wanting the best for themselves and their loved ones. However, not everyone, even adults, can distinguish between these two concepts. A dream is a special, cherished desire of a person, which, in his opinion, will bring happiness in the future; it is an image of what we want, but do not have the opportunity to get. And a goal is the result, the object that a person strives for and takes any action to achieve it. So what is the difference between these two seemingly related concepts? Dreams can lead a person into a world of illusions and isolate them from reality, when goals are part of reality. The difference between these two concepts is revealed in many works by authors of different eras.
Thus, Maxim Gorky’s play “At the Bottom” tells about people doomed not to life, but to existence, unable to return to their former life, to the society that pushed them into this “bottom.”
However, each of the characters in the play still dreams of something, wishes for something, hopes for the best. For example, Vaska Pepel dreams of a different life, and Nastya dreams of great love. The cruel Tick also desperately strives to get out of the “bottom” of existence; the actor thinks about how he will be cured and stop drinking. Can all this be called the goals of the heroes? No, these are just illusions, everything that the heroes dream about only shelters them from reality, helps them forget about all the troubles and suffering that they experience. People don’t even strive to do anything to change their lives for the better.
The second, no less striking example is the novel by I. A. Goncharov “Oblomov”. Main character works Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is presented to us as an apathetic and lazy person who spends most of my life lying on the sofa. This man rarely goes out, is not interested in anything and communicates with almost no one except his friend Stolz and his servant Zakhar. But such a person also knows how to dream. Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov depicts all the dreams in Oblomov’s dream. We see how the hero imagines his future ideal life: the improvement of his estate, a wonderful housewife who gives him love, warmth and care, quiet and cozy evenings with his family and close friends. But what did he do to achieve his dream? Nothing, he just continued to lie on the sofa, and even love changed him for the better only for a while. Ilya Ilyich Oblomov continued his apathetic existence. That is why everything the hero thought about cannot be called a goal.
Thus, we can conclude that dreams are just dreams, what people want for their own happiness, and the goal is what a person strives for, what he achieves with all his strength. Here is the main difference between these two concepts
Updated: 2017-12-03
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(355 words) The difference between a dream and a goal is imperceptible at first glance, but it is noticeable when you achieve what you want. Every person has cherished dreams: some want great love, some want a successful career, others like travel or fame. But for some, what is planned becomes a task intended to be accomplished, while others prefer to hope for a gift of fate and only imagine an ideal. Life, history, and literature prove that dreams come true on their own, and people achieve their goals.
If we remember Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man,” we will see how a little boy’s dream comes true at the end of the work. Vanya’s mother died and her father went missing, and the orphaned hero dreamed of a real family. hope for new life it is given to him by the lonely Andrei Sokolov, who introduces himself to Vanya as his father. The author demonstrates to the reader that dreams tend to come true even in the most difficult times, because the action in the story takes place during the Great Patriotic War. Andrei Sokolov himself lost his family, so it was unbearable for him to be in his hometown, where there were no relatives and no one to care for. His action is a step towards not only little Vanya, but also his dream. However, if for an adult, returning to a peaceful life is a goal, and he takes an adopted child to achieve it, then for a boy this is only a desire, the fulfillment of which occurs by itself.
Let's give an example of another hero who set himself a certain task. We will talk about the main character of Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” Rodion Raskolnikov. Setting himself a seemingly noble goal - to help the poor and eliminate social injustice, he chose inhumane means and went to kill the old money-lender. Indeed, few people mourned the victim, but the crime did not give the hero peace, so his goal is considered not to be fully achieved. However, he did everything to realize it. Rodion was tormented by remorse of a merciless conscience, because of which he even fell ill and almost went crazy. Throughout the novel, the reader understands that the only thing the hero wanted after the failed plan was peace of mind. And now it is already a dream, as it miraculously came true.
The goal for a person is specific task. By choosing the right means, we are able to realize our plans and find a path to success. A cherished dream comes true by itself or may remain unfulfilled, although the one who is able to turn it into a goal may become the happiest.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!Writing essays plays a big role in the development of a student’s thinking and imagination. In the process of completing this task, he learns not only to apply the rules of the Russian language in practice, but also to structure his thoughts. From all the heaps of ideas on a given topic that are present in his head, he selects only the most basic ones. Describing in an essay the differences that exist between a dream and a goal is a difficult task that forces the student to think about these important concepts.
What dreams can be
Not every person, even an adult, can immediately answer how a dream differs from a goal. But everyone has a cherished desire. And some people have not just one dream, but several. A person cannot live without imagining his future, wanting the best for himself and his loved ones. Dreams could be, for example, like this:
- Become a world famous movie star.
- Earn 100 thousand dollars a month.
- Travel all over the planet.
- Settle on a desert island.
- Become a professional detective.
- Have many children.
- Become president (or at least prime minister).
- Jump with a parachute.
- Learn to play a musical instrument.
- Overcome your biggest fear.
If you look at this list, it seems that it is almost impossible to determine how a dream differs from a goal. After all, both of these concepts mean what a person wants, what he strives for. However, in reality the difference is very significant, and it lies in activity. It is this component that is part of the goal.
Illustration of the difference between concepts
You can give many examples of how a dream differs from a goal. Vasya and Petya want to buy a house by the sea. Vasya constantly fantasizes about how nice it will be to come there in the summer; he imagines how many rooms there will be in the house and what kind of furniture they will be furnished with. He clearly sees what the area where his dream house will be located will look like.
Petya does things a little differently - he also paints rosy pictures in his imagination, but at the same time he also takes actions to translate them into reality. He carefully collects information about the price of houses in different regions, comparing offers with each other. Little by little, he saves money for his dream - maybe he sometimes has to work overtime to make it come true as soon as possible. It’s easy to guess that Petya is approaching the realization of his intention much faster than Vasya. Using his example, you can clearly see how a dream differs from a goal.
Examples in Russian literature
Both in Russian and foreign literature there are many heroes who had a cherished dream. For example, the main character of Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible all his life. All he did was rewrite papers. However, as soon as the dream of an overcoat appeared in his life, his entire existence was transformed. He developed new emotions and aspirations for the future.
Example Assol
By observing the heroes of various authors and the actions they take to achieve their happiness, you can see how a dream differs from a goal. The work “Scarlet Sails” by A. Green introduces us to a dream of a slightly different nature. The little girl Assol dreamed all her life that a ship with luxurious scarlet sails would bring her happiness.
She believed in her dream so sacredly that she even made small boats with her own hands, constantly went to the seashore and waited. And these minutes of waiting did not fill her soul with doubts - on the contrary, she experienced genuine joy and excitement. The reader can assume that her dream turned into a goal, since she did not just sit idly by, but believed that there would be someone who would fulfill her dream. In the essay “How does a dream differ from a goal?” The student can give other examples from Russian literature. In the work, one can also emphasize that the Russian mentality is not entirely characterized by faith in the realization of dreams, the desire to turn what one wants into reality. A. Green rather built his work based on the Western model, where everyone firmly believes in the fulfillment of their most cherished desires.
The play “At the Bottom”: will empty dreams help those who are beyond poverty?
Another work that a student can mention in his work “How does a dream differ from a goal?” is “At the Bottom” by M. Gorky. The heroes of the play are people who are doomed to a completely hopeless existence. These are thieves and cheaters, cripples and drunkards. However, even in them, who were deprived of the right to a normal life, the human aspiration for the better, the sense of self-worth, remained. For example, Vaska Pepel dreams of a different life, and the touching girl Nastya dreams of great love. Life has made Mite cruel, however, he also desperately strives to get out of the “bottom” of existence. However, Gorky with great force in his work attacks the bourgeois idea of a “comforting lie.”
Dangerous illusions
Another character - Luka - believes that all people are insignificant and weak, they are not capable of a real fight for their happiness. He is constantly engaged in sowing illusions in their minds, and these doomed people happily seize on them. For example, he tells Vaska Pepl that he could go to Siberia and start an honest life from scratch. He tells the drunkard Actor about a city where he is treated for alcoholism in a luxurious hospital. He consoles Anna, who is near death, with the hope of eternal life. Luke’s actions are further enhanced by the image of Satin, who also gives the answer to what needs to be done to get out “from the bottom.” However, Satin, just like other poor people, is incapable of real action. He does not know how to work and is completely infected with anarchist ideas.
Dream property: abstractness
We continue to consider the topic of the essay “How does a dream differ from a goal?” The arguments in a student's work may vary. A student can also cite the fact that dreams are, first of all, something abstract; they have no end or boundaries. For example, a person wants to be a doctor. However, he does not know specifically whether he would like to become an ENT specialist or a surgeon, a pediatrician or a dentist. Or you can dream of having a dog all your life, but know that you will never be able to afford it due to a number of restrictions.
Are dreams necessary?
However, it cannot be said that a person does not need dreams. After all, only by dreaming can a person feel alive, having his own feelings and views. Even if a dream seems impossible, it still lives in the soul, giving hope for a better future. People often talk about pipe dreams - aspirations that, due to a number of circumstances, have not yet become a reality.
However, often behind the concept of a “pipe dream” is a desire that should come true after time, when a person goes through difficult difficulties and trials. Sometimes you want to give up and forget about your cherished desire forever. But a dream can remain a dream. You need to try to turn it into a goal, and this can be done, as already indicated, only through actions. Some people do just that, giving up their cherished dreams.
But the dream does not disappear anywhere. And if you don’t give up on it, take action to implement it, try to bring its implementation closer even with the most inconspicuous deeds, sooner or later it will become a reality. In the essay, the student can indicate that every dream has its price - and it is not always about money. For example, this is the risk that what you want will not come true. Or giving up other alternatives - for example, a person dreams of becoming an artist, but then he must give up a career as a lawyer, which is also attractive to him.
“The word “Tomorrow” was invented for the indecisive and for children” © I. Turgenev
Regardless of age, goal setting brings exceptional benefits to a person. Defining and achieving goals fills life with meaning, makes a person happier, and creates a frame of reference for making decisions and setting priorities.
Setting goals, big or small, develops independent thinking - a vital component of a happy life. To achieve the results you want, your goals need to match your nature.
Dr. Edwin Locke, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Maryland School of Business, states: “People who choose their goals by copying the goals of others can never be truly happy. They are no longer the masters of their lives.”
You may dream of living in a big and beautiful house, lose weight or become slimmer, get a big dog or become a businessman. But you never achieve what you want.
The thing is that you live according to the “If” principle: if I have a house, if I have money... thereby postponing the realization of your dreams.
Imagine your dream as your goal, changing your "If" thinking to another frame of reference - "When"
“When I become rich. When I build a house...”
Defining goals in accordance with your life values, interests and desires helps you think freely and independently and allows you to become the person you want to be. You acquire a complete sense of responsibility for your life, your successes and failures.
Setting your own goals, implementation step by step plan achieving what you want allows you to increase self-esteem - another important component of happiness.
Every time you achieve another goal and add it to your list of personal victories, you are proving to yourself that you can achieve what you want, which strengthens your self-confidence.
You learn new strengths and new skills, allowing you to take on new challenges with a sense of satisfaction. This self-confidence helps eradicate pessimism, doubts and fears, giving you optimism and confidence that you will achieve what you want.
Interesting, but it turns out... the process of setting new goals is important in the fight against aging!! As we get older, we can lose our sense of meaning in life, especially as we retire and when our children leave home.
New goals pull us out of our complacency zone. They make you strive for more, feel the novelty of tasks, acquire new skills and abilities, thoughts and outlooks on life. They naturally encourage us to comprehend new things.
The desire for self-development makes us feel motivated and satisfied with life, makes our mind more active, open and flexible. All this is extremely important for preventing premature aging and preserving memory.
Keep records of achieving your goals
It doesn’t matter how serious the specific goal is. Formulation of goals in in writing, describing the results of your work and possible difficulties along the way will allow you to always solve your problems. Recordings will increase your sense of responsibility for success. They will also make you take your own goals more seriously.
If you limit yourself to simply repeating your goal to yourself, without making further efforts to record the process of achieving it, then you may soon lose seriousness in its implementation, or even forget about it.
This is interesting!
In experiments conducted by Dr. Gall Matthews of Catholic Dominican University, participants who recorded progress towards their goals were 33% more likely to succeed than those who did not record their progress.
Diary of success and goal setting
Keep yourself a personal “Success Diary” that will serve as your first step towards achieving your goals and desired results.
Start your journal by answering the following sample questions:
What do I want to achieve? And when? Why is this goal important to me? Who can help me achieve it? What exactly will indicate to me that I have achieved what I want? What specific steps do I need to take to achieve the desired result?
What should the goals be?
Goals should match your strengths and abilities.
Ask yourself questions: Can I take the actions necessary to achieve this goal? What actions will lead me to achieve this goal? Do I have enough strength to achieve it?
Goals must be in your true interests
Is this goal really meaningful to me? Does it meet my needs and values?
Goals must have a clear time frame
When do I want to achieve the first desired results and what can I do to achieve it today, in the coming days, weeks, months, year?
Goals should match your emotional state
Do I feel excited about achieving what I want? Do I have enough motivation and fortitude to achieve this goal? Will I be able to maintain my high desire for this goal until it is achieved?
When you think about this goal, you should be overwhelmed by a storm of feelings, a passionate desire to move forward
Every person dreams of something in life, and everyone sets goals for themselves, but few people think about how a dream differs from a goal, what meaning is brought into these concepts and whether there are similarities between them. After reading this article, you will find answers to your questions. We'll look at each of these concepts in more detail, highlight the distinguishing characteristics of goals and dreams, look at some famous examples from the literature, and even help you turn dreams into goals!
Translated from in English"dream" is a dream, an illusion and a vision. Based on this, it is clear that a dream is closely connected with our inner emotional world. Our inner voice suggests something intimate about what we really want.
A dreamer is like an idealist. He completely shifts responsibilities from himself to numerous external factors in the future, waiting for a miracle. Such a person is characterized by passivity and waiting - he makes no attempts to get closer to the fulfillment of his dreams and simply remains inactive, and his thoughts are characterized by formlessness and blurriness.
But wait to be disappointed in your fantasies. After all, dreams are one of the most effective ways to achieve your best achievements! Dreams inspire, don't they?
What is a goal
A goal, as opposed to a dream, is something concrete, for the sake of which plans are made and specific steps and deadlines for their implementation are developed. You must understand that the goal is always achievable. To do this, a person must constantly ask himself: “How can I achieve this,” and write down the steps to move towards what is planned.
Every person on earth has goals. They can be short-term and simple, for example, doing household chores, learning a poem, or long-term and ambitious: saving for a car, taking a management position, starting a family, etc.
There is also a purpose in life - something for which life takes on meaning, for which it is worth getting up in the morning. As in the case of small goals and large ones, success in achieving them depends on how correctly they were set.
How does a dream differ from goals?
Not everyone will be able to understand the difference between a “goal” and a “dream”. Simply put, we do not strive to materialize a dream, but the goal must certainly be something possible to fulfill and achievable.
But many people still get confused quite often and often call goals dreams, and dreams goals. In addition, despite the fact that we do not particularly strive to make our dreams come true, they sometimes come true! Does this mean anything? Do they turn into life goals or remain fantasies?
Dreams and goals also differ in how we bring our desires to life. Dreams are more to warm our souls and support our aspirations.
Goals force us to be persistent, to start doing something new, to change the current situation, to take responsibility for our whole life into our own hands.
Instructions on how to turn a dream into a goal
As you already understand, a dream is the basis of every goal. Sometimes people don’t even think about how, without much effort, you can turn your dream into reality and start dreaming about something more. There is an easy way to turn a dream into a goal: give your dreams an outline, specify them, make them more real and concrete.
There is also a special goal setting method - SMART, which helps to develop goals as ordinary people, and multi-million dollar companies. According to this methodology, when planning goals, the following characteristics must be taken into account:
- S (specific) - specificity: you must be aware of the clear result of your goal. One goal, one result. If it turns out that when setting a goal, several results are obtained, the goal can be split into several smaller goals.
- M (measurable) - measurable: you can use numbers (statistics) or your specially developed criteria with which you could understand that the goal has been achieved.
- A (attainable) - achievability: if the goal is unattainable, then the probability of its achievement is reduced to zero. Don't set the bar too high. You may be limited in time, in resources, in investments, in experience - all of this will prevent you from successfully achieving your goals. Set goals based on your strengths, clearly understanding which ways will really help you get closer to what you want.
- R (relevant) - relevance: look inside yourself and understand whether you need this goal at all, will achieving this goal have any meaning for you when you achieve it?
- T (timebound) - time limitation: set a deadline, exceeding which will indicate failure to achieve the goal. Limitations, clear deadlines stimulate us, keep us on our toes and do not give us anything, otherwise goals would forever remain our dreams.
An example of the difference between a dream and a goal
The first and probably most important difference between a dream and a goal is that a dream has no end. Your dreams are always abstract and endless. For example, everyone as a child would like to grow up and become doctors (or astronauts/policemen). But we hardly dreamed of any specific focus - surgeon, pediatrician, therapist. Or, for example, we fantasized about how nice it would be to have a horse or a raccoon, but due to certain circumstances we clearly understood why this could not happen.
Both a dream and a goal - both concepts are aimed at the future. However, the first is aimed at an unattainable future, and the other at the real one. How successful a person will be over time depends precisely on how correctly he has set his goal.
Interesting facts about dreams and goals
Have you noticed that as you get older, you daydream less? Unfortunately, this is really true: the older we become, the less we tend to dream, it’s as if we begin to be ashamed of it and become realists. But daydreaming also has a positive side: dreams develop our creative thinking and creative abilities, and also help with mental pain and disorders.
People who write down their goals on paper tend to work harder to achieve them compared to those who keep their goals in their heads.
Therefore, if you have not done this yet, right now write down the answers to the following questions on a piece of paper and place them in a visible place: “What goals do you set for yourself?”, “Do you have a plan to achieve your goals?” .
Dreams and goals in works
Famous Russian writers often turned to the concepts of dreams and goals in their works. Let's look at a few examples to help you understand how these concepts differ.
I. Kuprin in the work “Garnet Bracelet” gives the main character Zheltkov dreams of a relationship with Vera Nikolaevna. Sweet dreams cloud a man’s mind, and he discards all the unpleasant “little things” of reality: while dreaming, the main character forgets about the heroine’s shortcomings and the fact that she is already married. His love does not give him confidence that they will ever be together, therefore, when destroyed, the illusions destroy the hero himself.
In the story “Gooseberry” by A.P. Chekhov, the main character dreams of his own country estate, creating in his dreams the image of an ideal house with its own garden and pond. But he understands that if he continues to do nothing, his dreams will never come true. The main character decides to take specific actions, turning his dream into a goal. He develops a plan that will bring him closer to the fulfillment of his greatest desire: work hard and marry a rich girl. Soon he manages to achieve his goal and feels happy, although the image country house, which he drew in his head did not coincide with reality.
Conclusion
So, we hope now you understand how dreams differ from goals. Dreams are a vague image of what you want, which is unlikely to come true; goals are an achievable plan for obtaining the desired result.
But have you noticed how today's society is driven by goals? All kinds of planners, courses, trainings on how to set goals and go towards them.
Don't set goals at the expense of dreams. These are completely different states of a person’s inner world, but both develop us.
Setting goals will help you learn how to set goals, define exactly what you want, make clear plans and follow them, and also strengthen your life.
Develop your imagination, brighten up your drab everyday life, take your mind off pressing problems and plunge into childhood - that’s why you should dream!
Therefore, let your dreams come true and your goals be achieved. Dream for fun and set big goals!