Self-improvement, dreams, or following Jesus?

I have long been thinking what life is about for Christians. Where is the line between achieving our own dreams and doing God's will? How can we be sure that we are not trying to fulfil our own desires? Are we sure that, as we seek to fulfil our dreams, we do not in the process lose sight of God's kingdom and his purposes for his creation? I think the answer lies in the Cross.

Here is something Tom Wright says in his book, Virtue Reborn (or otherwise called After you believe), page 100.

Jesus's call to follow him, to discover in the present time the habits of life which point forward to the coming kingdom and already, in a measure, share in its life, only makes sense when it is couched the terms made famous by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Come and die". Jesus didn't say, as do some modern evangelists, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." Nor did he say, "I accept you as you are, so you can now happily do whatever comes naturally." He said, "If you want to become my followers, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me" (Mark 8.34). He spoke of losing one's life in order to gain it, as opposed to clinging to it and so losing it He spoke of this in direct relation to himself and his own forthcoming humiliation and death, followed by resurrection and exaltation. Exactly in line with the Beatitudes, he was describing, and inviting his followers to enter, an upside-down world, an inside-out world, a world where all the things people normally assume about human flourishing, including human virtue, are set aside and a new order is established. (Emphasis added)

Jesus would have said, of course, that it's the present world that is upside down and inside out. He was coming to put it the right way up, the right way out. That shift of perception is the challenge of the gospel he preached and lived, and for which he died.

What this means is that the normal standards, even the standards of virtue itself, are challenged at their core. No longer is the good life to be a matter of human beings glimpsing the goal of "happiness" in which they will become complete, and then setting about a program of self-improvement by which they might begin to make that goal a reality. They are summoned to follow a leader whose eventual goal is indeed a world of blessing beyond bounds, but whose immediate goal, the only possible route to that eventual one, is a horrible and shameful death. And the reason for this radical difference is not obscure. It is that Jesus's diagnosis of the problem goes far deeper than that of any ancient Greek philosopher. (Emphasis added)