photo from pixels.com
You can pursue your dreams – or not! Your choice. I’ll reveal a little secret to you:
No matter how much you desire for your dreams to become a reality and how hard you work to make them happen, there will be moments when they will lead you deep into an emotional abyss and that is the naked truth about pursuing dreams.
Here are some truths about pursuing dreams that are hard to admit.
1. While you chase your dreams, you will feel like a complete fool
Most ambitious dreamers have to face this reality because before the dream is achieved, it can sound like delusions that are not destined to come true. Now really, for example, what kind of sales manager might think of becoming an actor! Absolute nonsense! But lo and behold, here comes Peter into the office and declares to his colleagues:
– You know what, I’m tired of living like this. I’m tired of this job – I don’t want to do it anymore. I enrolled in acting school because I‘m finally determined to make my childhood dream come true – I am gonna be an actor. I want to be famous in Hollywood like KJ Apa (Keneti James Fitzgerald)! Well, I will work as a manager to make a living until then, but my vision for the future is different.
“Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.” — Chris Grosser
Let me guess: nonsense isn’t it! Peter has lost his mind, probably because of too much work these past couple of days. After all, Hollywood is as far as space! And if this manager had stated that he wants to be an entrepreneur because he is tired of working for someone – that he wants to become the master of his life. Would the reaction be different? I don’t think so, going from manager to an entrepreneur is no small feat either.
And here we feel and look like complete idiots because we want too much! Actually, we just feel like idiots, and we look like idiots just because we feel that way. And then we hear Peter’s voice again: – Ha, got ya. You really believed all of this!
Everyone feels relieved. Everything is alright with Peter, and here we thought he lost his mind.
And Peter, turning everything into a joke, throws away the unpleasant burden of feeling like an idiot.
“If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” — Steve Jobs
Or maybe we care too much about the reactions and opinions of others and what they think of us? Or maybe we want and are waiting for approval, permission to make our dreams come true? And how not to feel completely dumb when talking about our dreams, whatever they may be (not necessarily as big as the examples given)?
“Don’t let someone else’s opinion of you become your reality” — Les Brown
This is where I want to insert the example of Jim Carrey, a famous Hollywood comedian. In the documentary “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond”, he tells his story of where his career began, how everything went and where it led. At certain moments, the people he worked with considered him completely insane until the moment he became a genius in their eyes. What was most interesting about it was that this didn’t bother him at all because his whole concentration was focused on the goal! He would lose himself in a role that after the end of a film he would no longer know who he was!
And that’s the naked truth about how not to feel like a complete fool while pursuing dreams: accept the fact that at certain moments others may make you feel like a fool and as a result you may actually feel that way, but that doesn’t mean you are one or that you have to stop. As long as we pursue our dreams, we may look like fools, but only until we have realized them. Focus on the goal.
2. Sometimes you will have no motivation and inspiration and that will be a challenge
Motivation sounds like a good hit that you want to be playing in your ears on repeat, but motivation comes and goes, and the tasks that you have to do to reach your goal don’t wait for motivation to come and visit once in a while.
It’s indescribably amazing on days when motivation and inspiration are gushing out, but it’s just impossible for it to be this way every day and that’s the naked truth. Make peace with that.
The reality we face when we talk about motivation and inspiration is that very often we just don’t feel them! We do tasks as if by force and as a result we may feel even worse, because after all, going towards a dream should be gratifying! And even worse is the day after the day when you feel super motivated and inspired, because after that day, for some mystical inexplicable reason, you fall into an antimotivational pit. But you so hoped that this would be the moment from which, with motivation and enthusiasm, you would only move forward, but it turns out to have passed and you soak in reality once again.
How to help yourself? Know that from the moment you turn your dreams into goals you will have to “wade through fire and water” to create what you dreamed of and therefore have to learn to allow yourself to feel fucking bad (literally) and learn not to blame yourself for it, because it’s part of the process. After all, no one promised it would be easy, and when people face Challenges they don’t really burst with enthusiasm and that’s absolutely normal. In those moments, all that remains is to rely on discipline and move forward consistently, and when motivation and inspiration reappears again, don’t hesitate and use it to your advantage.
3. Failures, you will experience them a lot, but they are the key to success
As we know, we learn through experience and we do it when we take action and do things – everything is clear. But that knowledge absolutely doesn’t help when we face failure. Why does this happen? Because, while drinking tea in a comfortable chair we can’t feel what it means to fail! It is an emotion that overwhelms the body and mind. It is definitely very strong, and knowing and experiencing it are completely incomparable things. And it takes a little bit of time to get used to it. And you will have to get used to it, because there is no straight road to the goal, so you have to sit on the roller coaster and go at full speed. Another important point: don’t deny your feelings and don’t pretend it’s all right when you don’t actually feel that way. When we fail, the worst thing we can do for ourselves is to close ourselves off and try to convince ourselves that we are feeling well. However, such behavior will only harm us even more, because experiencing failure is not easy emotionally, especially if we put a lot of effort into it, so it’s better to allow ourselves to open up and just go through everything so we can rationally analyze mistakes, correct them, and try again.
The good news is that nothing but failures can lead us to new discoveries, because when we experience them, we look for solutions. And whoever seeks will sooner or later discover.
P.s. “You learn more from failure than from success. Don’t let it stop you. Failure builds character.” — Unknown
The bottom line
From the moment you turn your dreams into goals, you will feel like you are riding a roller coaster. You will rise and fall without warning. You will feel a sense of satisfaction when you succeed and frustration when everything slips out of your hands. You will learn a lot, but the feeling of still not knowing anything won’t go away. You will lose motivation, experience many setbacks, and not feel inspired, and you will have to rely on discipline to move forward in those moments. But in the end, this is the real key to success, so failure is the price we have to pay to create the life we desire.
Level up your faith in your dream
Let me know what are the biggest challenges you face while trying to achieve your dreams?