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This is my infographic containing all of my conclusions to what the American Dream is.

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by the beach - Photo Collage by Hallie Schoemaker

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This quote from Martin Luther King Jr. has inspired many people that they can accomplish anything they put their mind to. You just have to work hard in order to get what you want and truly believe you can get it. "Let us therefore continue our triumphal march to the realization of the American dream... for all of us today, the battle is in our hands... The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions... We are still in for the season of suffering... How long? Not long. Because no lie can live forever... our God is marching on." I agree and support this quote because the American Dream will not be easily achieved but it is achievable overall.

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I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal

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This video shows how much it costs to raise a child in the middle class. This is an insane amount of money in my opinion since most people will not make this much in many years of working. The cost of kids should not be this high and it makes the Dream way harder to achieve.

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Raising a middle class child costs nearly a quarter million

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A new government report finds that the average middle class family will spend nearly $250,000 on a child born last year. CBS News business analyst Jill Schlesinger discusses the numbers.

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I interviewed my dad for this project. He gave me input on what he thinks the American Dream contains.

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These statistics show how the American Dream is dying since things just cost too much money. It is almost too hard to make it since job opportunities and cost of living is just so much. I agree since the cost of things has gone up so much and companies have been paying people less and less to save money for themselves.

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This article talks about how the American Dream is not attainable to most people. They state that in order to achieve the dream, the person must believe that it is possible to achieve it. Most people think that it is way too hard to achieve, which I think isn't trre. I think that anything is possible as long as you believe it is attainable. Something I do agree with that this article talks about is how the American Dream does not come as easily to some as others. Some people because of their race, religion, sex, etc. have less or more opportunities as others because of the way the United States is built.

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What is the American Dream? How does one define it today and what is the path to earn it? This is an active conversation at the dinner table, and amongst friends, business leaders and entrepreneurs. We have certainly heard this question numerous times during the Presidential campaign and both candidates have yet to help America understand what this nebulous term really means.

People are hurting and as the pain grows, sharing it with others becomes more common. As such, leaders across the private and public sectors must come together and play a larger role to help define the new American Dream. When today's leaders are forced to touch the business just as much as they lead it, they begin to understand the struggles that people face and the reality of how difficult it is to create and sustain momentum. Leaders are now getting their hands dirty and are much more aware of how difficult it is to achieve anything that is purposeful and that matters.

On the other hand, these same leaders know that the rules of business and societal engagement are evolving rapidly. As such, this requires 1) a new approach to build trust, 2) relevancy to create meaningful relationships, and 3) an almost flawless track-record to be considered for a loan or an investment to be made in a particular opportunity. This is why we speak of the new American Dream. Unlike the past, when all you needed was a college degree to increase your chances of achieving the dream - today much more is required for you to even be considered to earn the right to pursue the dream.

Leaders must remind themselves and advise others that to achieve the new American Dream requires one thing that is certain: you must balance knowledge (the head) with wisdom (the heart). It's no longer just about what you know, but what you do with what you know. In the new American economy, it's about transparency, trust, opening up your heart and leading with kindness. Why do you think that so many American's reacted most favorably to Ann Romney's speech at the Republican convention?

The new American Dream is no longer about pursuing opportunity - but learning how to earn the right to both see it and seize it. Today, the real opportunities are hidden. They hide behind doors that only a combination of knowledge and wisdom can earn. Opportunity is the true mother of success and for too many years, access to it has been made too easy and thus abused by greed and distrust. The new American Dream requires you to earn opportunity. This doesn't mean that you will be able to seize it - it takes time to have a seat at the table - but you must get the conversation started.

This is what most people don't understand about the new ground rules and what leaders must learn and then be more deliberate about teaching others. Opportunity in the past was available for those who could see it. Today, it you must be able to successfully navigate yourself "through a filter" that earns you the right to be considered for the opportunity. This filter evaluates how effectively you manage your knowledge and wisdom equally.
Why do you think it's so hard to get in the door these days? People need to trust your intentions, measure your credibility and believe that you are interested in pursuing a relationship for the right reasons (in a moment's notice).
Unfortunately, many people in America still believe that government will solve their problems or that big business will fuel the economy in a way that gets us back to normal. What used to be defined as normal - those days are gone. Long gone. And I am deeply concerned for those that still believe they can exist. Today, history is being written and we are all learning from the modern-day innovators who have redefined how to pursue the new American Dream rightly (e.g., Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Howard Schultz and Richard Branson).

In the past, government and big business could serve as both providers and enablers for opportunity. Today, we are fortunate if either of these groups can consistently provide any real opportunities - and if they can, they certainly are no longer capable of enabling it for you. That's no longer their responsibility (and the truth is - it never was). When the economy was strong, it appeared as if that both of these groups were enabling opportunity when in reality they were just providing more resources than usual to make it easier for people to reach some level of success. Were we living in an artificial reality? This is why there is much more discussion these days around why people need to have a much more entrepreneurial attitude in order to create their own success.

The American Dream of the past inspired hope and optimism. When you could believe that anything was possible, it became easier to dream. While I wholeheartedly encourage people to continue dreaming (and dream big), you must be aware that the infrastructure and resources of the past are either gone, much more difficult to access, or in the process of being recreated to support the new ground-rules previously mentioned. As such, earning the right to pursue an opportunity has now become not only a responsibility, but requires a set of skills that must be learned in order to properly seize opportunity and keep momentum alive.

In 2009, I launched my first book, Earning Serendipity - 4 Skills for Creating and Sustaining Good Fortune in Your Work. At the time of the book's release, I thought it was a message that America's corporations and its leaders were not ready to accept, but should be considering. In fact, the title was changed a few times until I realized that earning serendipity was the best representation of what America and the workplace had forgotten to do over the course of the past decade. When our economic bubble inflated and lines of credit were easy to obtain, people became self-satisfied, grew lazy and lost their hunger to compete.

Earning serendipity was a term I coined to represent opportunity mastery, innovation, humanity; what diversity could do for business, personal reinvention, your legacy, the spirit of giving and the urgency of now! It was the introduction to the immigrant mentality advantage.

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Why Most People Will Never Achieve The American Dream

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What is the American Dream? How does one define it today and what is the path to earn it? This is an active conversation at the dinner table, and amongst friends, business leaders and entrepreneurs. We have certainly heard this question numerous times during the Presidential campaign and both candidates have yet to help America understand what this nebulous term really means.

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These statistics show what most Americans think the American Dream contains. Most believe that it involves the following: having personal freedom,  achieving one's potential, met basic needs, having enough free time, being in harmony with nature, and achieving affluence. I agree with that because the dream has many aspects incorporated into the overall dream. I believe in all of those since you need to be comfortable and happy in order to achieve it.

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What does the "American Dream" mean today? How-and how successfully-are Americans achieving this dream? How has the concept of the "American Dream" shifted over the past 10 years?

These questions are at the heart of New Dream's 2014 national survey, conducted in partnership with PolicyInteractive.

The survey, which polled 1,821 U.S. citizens ages 18 and over, illustrates the shift in public consciousness around the topic of the American Dream and sheds new light on the topics of advertising, the environment, consumption, and the sharing economy.
Major findings include:
1. The majority of Americans believe that it is more difficult to achieve the American Dream than it was a decade ago, due primarily to the high costs of education and healthcare.

2. Americans who have chosen to work fewer hours report an overall improvement in quality of life, indicating that this shift has positively affected their lives by allowing for more free time and reduced stress.

3. Americans are interested in increasing their sharing practices and learning more about the sharing economy. Over half of respondents believe that sharing lowers environmental impact, builds community, and helps save money.

4. Americans feel strongly that the way we live produces too much waste, and that our high consumption levels are largely responsible for global environmental problems. An overwhelming majority feel that we will need to make major changes in the way we live to counterbalance this phenomenon.

5. Americans believe that commercialism and advertising have gotten out of hand in the United States, and that the government should do more to combat it. Almost three-quarters of Americans believe there should be limits on advertising to children, including limits on advertising in public spaces and in schools.

6. Millennials make use of sharing economy services -such as bike sharing and peer-to-peer lodging-at a rate more than double their Baby Boomer and Gen X peers, and are interested in expanding their sharing practices. They are also more optimistic than Baby Boomers and Gen Xers that they will be able to achieve the American Dream.

7. Non-white Americans are more interested in sharing practices than white Americans.

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New Dream | New American Dream Poll 2014

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What does the "American Dream" mean today? How-and how successfully-are Americans achieving this dream? How has the concept of the "American Dream" shifted over the past 10 years? These questions are at the heart of New Dream's 2014 national survey, conducted in partnership with PolicyInteractive. The survey, which polled 1,821 U.S.

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What Americans think the American Dream contains:
I agree with these statistics since this is how I describe the American Dream.

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This video has multiple people describing the American Dream which is achieving greatness for most. A veteran was saying how being a millionaire is a very big aspect. I disagree since I think the Dream is being happy, comfortable with money, and having a good job. I do not think being a millionaire is an aspect because being happy is the most important thing.

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This article talks about how for 7 in 10 children, they will have less financial security than their parents. Another topic they talk about is how the American Dream is described as doing better than the generations before them. I agree with that since you can always do better as long as you put your mind to it. I do not agree with the fact that the American Dream is doing better than everyone in the generation before but I do think that doing better as a whole society is a very important thing.

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Opportunity, homeownership and retirement security are down. Now we hear that most believe the next generation will be worse off than the last. Well, OK, but the kids don't believe it.

Getty Images

The American dream has taken hit after hit the past half decade. It just suffered another blow, based on a new poll. Yet young people seem determined to turn things around, giving us all cautious cause for optimism.

When writer James Truslow Adams coined the phrase in 1931 he called the American dream "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement." So it was all about opportunity, which largely has disappeared amid a poor jobs market, heavy debts, and wages that have stalled for 25 years.

In more recent times, the American dream became closely identified with home ownership. But that idea suffered a blow in the housing bust. Just 65% of Americans own their home, down from 69% pre-bust, and four out of five Americans are rethinking the reasons they'd want to buy a house.

Perhaps the newest definition of the American dream comes from the National Endowment for Financial Education, which found that nearly half of adults define the dream as a comfortable retirement. Most just want to quit work at 65 or 67 and not worry. That's their dream, which far outpaces the 17% who cling to homeownership as the embodiment of Adams' vision.

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Now we see yet another blow to yet another version of the American dream, which at times has been described as each generation doing better than the last. Seven in 10 Americans say that when today's children are adults, they'll have less financial security than adults today, according to an Allstate/ National Journal Heartland Monitor poll.

Adults overwhelmingly believe childhood and parenthood were better for earlier generations; 79% say it was better to have been a child when they were young. Most believe today's kids will have a poorer chance of holding a steady job and owning a home without too much debt, and that their children will have less opportunity to achieve a comfortable retirement.

The downbeat view doesn't stop there. Adults also believe that today's children will display less patriotism, a poorer work ethic, and less civic responsibility when they come of age.

All this pessimism would be deadly troublesome if not for one thing: young people aren't buying it. More than half of teens in the Heartland Monitor poll say it's better to be a kid today, and nearly half say that when they are their parents' age they will have more opportunity-not less.

Maybe that's because young people learned a lot during the Great Recession. They saw their parents get socked. But with no real assets at risk themselves they came through it unscathed, financially speaking, and yet took the lessons to heart and are more conscious about spending and debt than Mom and Dad have been.

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Maybe that's because they've seen stocks come roaring back and the housing market begin to recover. Mom and Dad may not be whole yet, and still stinging. But those who began their careers in the past five years and were smart enough to sign up for a 401(k) have been building wealth steadily.

Maybe that's because, stereotypes be damned, they know something about their work ethic that boomers and other elders do not: Millennials are pretty darned committed to their careers-they just see it in different terms.

Or maybe it's just because young people can't imagine life without the Internet or smartphones or, well, reality TV. Toddlers today play on iPads. With mobile technology, young professionals can get their jobs done at the beach. By comparison, older generations grew up in the dinosaur age. We had outrageous long-distance bills, three channels and a TV with rabbit ears. Dude, what's so great about that?

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Is the American Dream Withering or Just Changing?

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Opportunity, homeownership and retirement security are down. Now we hear that most believe the next generation will be worse off than the last. Well, OK, but the kids don't believe it. The American dream has taken hit after hit the past half decade. It just suffered another blow, based on a new poll.