What is your dream? What would you love to do? How would you love to live every day? If you could choose, if everything would be possible, how would you create your average week or year? Now think of why. Why do you want your life to look like this?
If your why is, because it makes you happy or simply because it feels right, it is the right thing. The longer our dreams exist in our head, the more important it is to question whether the dream is still what we want. Make sure what you are dreaming of, is actually your dream. Often we don’t recognize that the things we always wanted, aren’t what we need anymore or were never our dreams in the first place but rather an outside expectation from someone else, who’s love, appreciation or approval we were trying to get. There is nothing wrong with changing our dreams. We change all the time, our lives change, our needs change, and so do our dreams. But for now, think of the life of your dreams or simply one thing that is really important to you, that you want to achieve or create in your life, and know why you want it.
Ask yourself what is holding you back. Then ask again, what is really holding you back from making it a reality?
In fact, let me answer this one for you: You are the reason. You are holding yourself back. I know. You might either come up with a variety of other reasons that have something to with other people holding you back or that the time is not right, or that you have to pay your bills, or all the things that I used to tell myself as well. But you know what? It all comes down to yourself, to your choices, eventually. Because you are the one to decide whether you allow other people having such a power over your life, that they are able to hold you back or not. You are the one who decides that it is not the right time. You are the one who believes that there is no way to work on your dreams while still being able to pay the bills. It is all you. That is a hard pill to swallow for some people, and it was uncomfortable for myself as well. Especially because I thought I was very reflected, I did a lot of self-reflection and personal development work. I even mediated everyday (which I thought must make one even more self-conscious, until I found out it does but not in the way I thought, there is always room to learn more, a lot of room). However, I ended up recognizing that I was, in fact I am the creator of my life. Which means, I created all the things that I didn’t like in my life, in one way or another. Of course there a many things that we seemingly don’t have any influence on but in the end, we are the ones, deciding whether that bothers us or not. Truly.
Think of rain. Are you happy when it starts to rain or does it bother you? Whatever you think about rain, there are many people who feel the exact opposite about rain. We choose whether we like the rain or not. We all have a reason for our decision. And all the reasons are reasonable. And the same principle applies to all the things in our life, especially those we don’t like. Once I realized this, it changed everything. Actually, it simply changed my perspective. It changed only one thing, but this one thing changed my life. Understanding that I could change the way how I react to the things that I don’t like to have in my life, made me realize that even the worst things are just as bad, as I thought they were. If I could detach from the way I expected things to be and rather accepted them, I could focus on the things that I can actually change. Instead of wasting all my energy on things, that I have no power over, I have the possibility to accept them, detach, and focus on what I can change. Trying another way, working through it, find another option or simply change direction.
Then I looked around me. I looked at all the things around me and remembered, that it took extraordinary mindsets to create the first car, plane, phone, electricity, and anything else. If you’d ask me to build a car today, I had no clue how to do that. I’d tell you that it’s impossible. But someone did it before me, right? There are millions of cars driving on the streets, I know that it is possible, yet it seems impossible to me. But it isn’t. Or is it? What if your dream was just like building a car? It seems impossible to you now, but in fact it wasn’t? Imagine it was possible to live the way you imagine but it would take some time to get there. It would take time to learn the skills, to make things work, it would take some trials, fails, and some time. But eventually you would end up living it, living your dream. How would you feel about it?
What if I tell you, that this is how it is? Would you be willing to try it? Are you ready to work towards the life you are dreaming of? So, here it is: I tell you, it is possible! 99% of the dreams of people are possible, and the only reason holding them back, is themselves not believing in their own dream.
There is another thing to consider. When people dream of their perfect life though, they often just focus on the goal but forget that there is a way to get there, and they especially forget what it takes to walk down this path towards their goal. Let’s make it tangible. Let’s say someone dreams of having a six-pack (assuming you have a much more meaningful goal than simply this, it’s an easy example to explain you what I am talking about). Back to the person who is dreaming of a six-pack. It seems nearly impossible to the person to ever have a six-pack but they see so many people who have one, and know that it is possible. They take the next step and believe that it is possible and the next step is where most people give up already, not even close half-way. They start looking into how to achieve it and find out that it requires a lot of work, consistent work. It will also take months if not longer to get there. Some stop pursuing their dream right here, now that they know what it takes to get to the goal. They are not willing to walk down the path towards their goal, before they even started and experienced it. Others though start working on it, experience it and get frustrated after some time and give up after the first few days, weeks or after some months because things don’t go fast enough. Why though? They know it will eventually get them to their goal? Why would they stop working on it?
Why do people stop working on their dreams so early? Even when they know that it possible? What does this mean to endeavors that are much more complex than working on a six-pack, which millions of people have done before? What about things that no one has done before? Remember the car example? Why didn’t those people stop? Why didn’t Steve Jobs stopped working on his company Apple even when he wasn’t part of the company anymore, when he was forced out of his own company? They were simply people, like we all are, no super heroes with magical powers. At least not that we know. There is only one thing that differentiates them from people who give up, when it gets hard. They never stopped believing in themselves and their why. They had a different perspective on failure and challenges during the process. They knew it wouldn’t be easy but they were willing to work through any obstacle along the way.
Be sure, to know what you are asking for, when you are dreaming of something.
Having a million or billion, seems great at first. But do you really know what it takes to get there? Do you know how the life of people who already achieved what you want to work on, how the everyday life of those people looks like? Sure, there are some people, who were born in wealthy families, who didn’t have to work for it in order to get this money but even they, at some point, will have to work on sustaining what they were born to. But I talk about the people who first had to get there. Because that would be where a person, dreaming of such money would have to start at. Being an international successful singer or any other kind of artist, seems like the best thing on earth to so many people. But is it, really? Do people consider how their day-to-day life looks like? Do they want this kind of life or do they simply admire parts of it, the money, the status, maybe? My plea here is, try to really understand, what you are wishing for. You need to see the whole picture. Because this is what you want to have. Unless you find a way to have the things that you admire about your dream without having to do the things, those people do. When you understand the whole
It is all about perspective. It is about how we look at the things. Good and bad is very relative. Easy and hard, too. Even wrong and right are relative, depending on how you look at things. Possible and impossible as well.
I know, that you have this dream on your mind for a reason. You read this, knowing what it takes to get there, at least as much as you probably could know about it. You don’t just want to have the six-pack, you are willing to work for it. But something is still holding you back. You still don’t fully believe that it is possible.
In case you feel like you can’t achieve it, start working on growing into the person who can achieve this dream. Be patient, believe in it, work hard, balance work with rest, stay consistent and the rest will work out itself.
No dream is too big, too complicated, too weird – you can do it, when you really want to.
Do you want it?