Thelife
- Karen Arrington is the founder of the Miss Black USA Pageant. Since founding the pageant in 1986, Karen has mentored over 1,000 young women, helping them get into top medical schools, land major modeling and recording contracts, secure life-changing grants and sponsorship deals, and more.
- The following is an excerpt from her book, "Your Next Level Life: 7 Rules of Power, Confidence, and Opportunity for Black Women in America."
- In it, she says that you shouldn't expect to reach your goals overnight - but there are seven steps you can take right now.
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I founded the Miss Black USA Pageant back in 1986. Since that year, I've had conversations with over 1,000 young women - conversations about their aspirations, their education, their future goals, everything they want to be and achieve. I'm constantly encouraging women to think bigger. I'm the queen of preaching, "Dream big!"
Of course, it's easy to talk about big dreams. But, it's harder to walk the talk, put your dreams into action, and move toward your goals.
Now, don't get me wrong. Talking big and dreaming a big life were the beginnings to every earth-shaking action that ever took place throughout history and always will be. Talking things out is the first step toward building your next level life.
Unfortunately, most people are unable to move beyond the big talk and launch into action. That's because they probably think of their dreams and goals as these huge undertakings and put unnecessary pressure on themselves to get from A to Oprah.
But Oprah wasn't built in a day!
Don't expect to reach your goal overnight. The key to closing the gap between your dreams and your reality is to break down what you're saying you want to do "eventually" into easily attainable chunks of action that you can do right now.
Here are my top seven recommendations on how to close the gap between what you're saying and what you're actually doing: