Its no secret that over the last 5 years financially speaking it has been one of the toughest, if not the toughest periods in world economic history. It is for reasons such as this that makes people stop believing in their dreams and striving for the ‘perfect life’, this blog post discusses why you should keep believing in your dream and what you may encounter along your path.
1. You question if you are a dreamer, but you aren’t the only one
Everyone who is anyone has dreams. Whether it is becoming a musician or artist, running a successful enterprise or winning the lottery. Many people will try for a little while, maybe not do quite the right things to make a success of their chosen goal and so feel it is out of reach. The problem with most people who reach for the stars, including myself, want things now! As human beings we are not patient and
2. If you stop following your highest ideal what is the point?
When I reached the bottom of my barrel in life I was quite literally hanging by a thread…should I stay or should I go? Vast amounts of debt, no opportunity, lack luster relationship and a world that seemed very unjust.
I was so close to ending it all but was pulled back from the brink of the grim bloke’s hand by the love of my family. Being so close to death removed my fear of dying and reduced my fear of what others opinions of myself are. This gave me the drive and determination to become a professional creative, albeit inhouse but I was turning my life around.
The message here is what is the point of life if you give up on your dreams? One day WE WILL die, one day money, experience and the people around you WILL go. Will you look back on life and say you did all you could to follow the path of your dream whilst not hurting others as you go or will you look back and regret that you should have done more whilst you were young?
If I was 20 again I would tell my young self NOT to go to university and waste 30k on an over priced government educational scheme and instead teach myself web coding at a much young age, but hindt sight is a wonderful thing!
3. Others tell you that you can’t do it, do you believe them?
When you discuss your ideas with others they will laugh at you, they will tease you and torment you. They can’t see your vision and they are scared as hell to do anything that involves risking their livelihood, respect and to be quite honest, most people don’t know where to start or to find the time so see any venture as ‘unrealistic’.
You need to stop giving a shit (pardon my french ) what other people think about you and your ideas if you are to give your dream a go. If you listen to people’s opinions and value the wrong ones because your ego has been emotionally hurt then you are giving up on life! Yes as human beings we naturally want to be accepted but get used to being rejected because following your dream people WILL try to pull you back for fear of feeling you will do better than them.
4. People tell you that you are deluded
Once, I worked as a general builder, painting and decorating, labouring and apprentice plumbing. I was working for my father under his small business and I had a jolly good time and a lot of banter with the painters in particular! One of them was very very intelligent, read a lot of books and had so much knowledge should have probably been a lecturer, another was a couple of years older than me and a kind soul and the last one was Mr Pessimism , actually he probably would have won Mr Pessimism World had there been such a competition. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great guy and very kind but had given up on his dreams long ago and here I was dreaming!
He would tell me things such as ‘this may be the best time of your life you are having right now’ & ‘you won’t ever be rich John’ & ‘wake up!’ but I would always knock the comments back and let them go over my head, I won’t stop dreaming until they day my heart stops.
5. But I have no finances
This is the major stumbling block on people’s dreams.
If like me you have no finances because a) all your money was plowed into a very clever marketing ploy by government to get more money off its young citizens by telling them to get a degree ‘because thats what everyone does to get a better life’ ( what a lot of cow poop!) or b) a partner expected you to give everything you had to be able to live even though you had very little or c) you had a bit of a ‘oh im young! I want to live now’ attitude or d) all of the above, you feel as broke as a pauper, how can you fund your dream?
There are ways such as angel investors or even borrowing money from friends/family. Or if your dream isn’t business related and is to become a model or actor then look for modelling agencies, find the ones that don’t take a fee for taking your photographs, join starnow.co.uk and find those auditions. Unless YOU put yourself forward you may never be known about.
Plus, now that social media is around it makes it a lot to easier to network and link to people around the world who are in the industry you want to join or do business with! Start tweeting, google plussing, liking and generally having online conversations, you don’t know where they will lead!
6. Dreams drive you to gain a better life
Like I have already mentioned when you hit rock bottom when all hope is gone the dream can save you and drive you to attempt to reach the goal that seems so unreachable to all others. I nearly tried to talk a family member out of a dream she had because I didn’t think the business model was real, I felt it was a corporation exploiting people. Then I thought…who the hell am I to tell someone they can’t do something!? If they believe it and have studied the business idea in detail then go for it, one day we will be dead so at least lets try and live the life we want to have.
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Am I living my dream? In some ways, yes! I have managed to land a job where I am using my creative talents, I have learnt such a great deal from my current position, my MD has given me a lot of new information I never knew and I am ever so grateful to being given the opportunity by someone and for someone to see something in me after 5 years of struggling.
I met the most wonderful woman who became my wife whom I would never had met if it wasn’t for my employer.
My employment restored my belief that I had something to offer, that the world is mainly made up of good people and that my dream to achieve a ‘comfortable lifestyle’ can be achieved so for this alone I am always indebted to my employer, MigSolv the data centre experts. The things is, if I had given up on my dream and said ‘oh well, I couldn’t become an architect in my hometown I’ll just do anything’ in may 2008 then would I be a branding designer right now? Probably not.