Do You Have A Dream?
Do You Have A Dream?
The path to achieving our potential and delivering our impact on the world lies within, hiding safely and waiting to be released.
Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.
— Lao Tzu
The personal development world is filled with countless versions of the idea you can achieve your dreams if you’re willing to make the commitment and do the work. The proof revealed through inspirational stories of people from humble beginnings doing great things and creating a significant impact in the world. All because they believed in their dream and took action to bring it to life.
Photo by Alexis Fauvet on Unsplash
The stories inspire, encourage, and engage us. And no doubt, like me, you’ve heard more than one that captured your attention and, at least for a moment, made you dream about what you could achieve if you went all in and played all out.
But reality quickly called us back.
The doubting voices within ceased their silence. They flood every corner of our being with all the made-up reasons why we couldn’t achieve whatever dream the stories planted.
Guess what?
Those voices were WRONG (as usual)!
Yet many of us listened and accepted where we were was where we belonged. We pushed the dream into the recesses of our minds and kept it hidden from everyone, including ourselves.
Fortunately, it didn’t rest there comfortably.
Every time we learned another story of someone’s success after pursuing their dream, it resurfaced. Taunting us. Teasing us to think about it again. Revealing visions of what might be possible if we decided to act.
Many, perhaps most, of us again tried to put it back on the shelf. The torment of what might be too hard to handle. The angst of not having acted on it when it first hit us uncomfortable. The fear of trying and failing screaming at us to return to the safety of our daily routine.
Perhaps the tendency to do just that is why Henry David Thoreau wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Can we agree not to join said mass? Can we decide today to go after our dreams? Not for ourselves, but for those who need us to act.
Think about that for a moment: Who misses out if you don’t act upon your dream?
If we’re serious about becoming who we were born to be and fulfilling our purpose, we have no choice — We must confront the doubts, rekindle the dream, and commit to bringing it to life.
Because if we don’t, we’ll reach a point where we lose the energy and enthusiasm it creates within us. We’ll never experience the joys of the journey, gain the lessons we were supposed to learn, serve the people whose lives we were created to change.
Today’s Action Question: Isn’t it time to breathe life into your dream? Step one is mining it from the recesses of your mind, dusting it off, and choosing step two.
P.S. Chances are there’s someone you thought about (besides yourself) while reading this. A person you know who has a dream they need to resuscitate. Why not do them the favor of nudging them to at least start thinking about it? A good first step might be sharing this post with them — I’d be grateful if you did, because they may be just the reason these thoughts came through my fingertips this morning.