Stop the negativity, the excuses, and the incessant focus on your obstacles. Chasing your dreams is the only thing you’re meant to do in life.
You may be haunted by visions throughout your waking life. These images are constantly in your mind, make little sense and refuse to go away no matter what else may be more important. They are visions of a perfect life and an excellent path – most of us call them “dreams”, “fantasies”, or “hopes”.
There are many out there who claim not to have them. They believe that they have never thought about what they ultimately want from their life story.
Others have clear visions but have been fed a false or misleading timeline for their development, believing they need to wait or “pay their dues” before starting to pursue them.
Others know them, followed them, and encountered early forms of failure, falling into the temptation of believing that what they wanted was unrealistic.
The world is full of people who were forced to accept a life where their dreams did not materialize, and all of us fear we may end up in this club of despair.
The fear is real and paralyzing, and it is sure to guarantee defeat.
There was a time when I wasted many hours trying to settle two main questions.
The first:
“How hard should I chase my crazy illogical dreams if there is a chance that they are simply not going to happen?”
The second:
“How can one enjoy the “present” if one is always chasing a dream? How can one be happy when one is so focused and so determined that nothing else really matters?”
I’m incredibly grateful for the books, mentors, and life experiences that taught me how useless those questions really are (and how little connection they have to the way life works).
Your dreams are in your head for a reason. Nothing that makes you feel raw passion, overflows your brain with pure joy, and tickles your intellect to the point of ecstasy is accidental.
Visions of seemingly unachievable dreams are an essential part of the human experience, and when you have them, you are very much supposed to go after them.
Whatever those fantasies are (they could be a family, a company, a screenplay, a small store, a restaurant, a video game, or anything else that you can imagine), you will find your greatest life experiences on the road to making them happen.
What thoughts would you like to have on your deathbed?
Would you like to look back at these incredible dreams and wonder why the hell you rationalized not going after them?
Would you like to wonder what your life may have been had you not given up?
Would you like to be the kind of person who dies with regrets?
Neither do I.
And what about the concept of “ambition” versus “living in the now”?
No debate is more perplexing or more useless, because the thought process that leads us to believe that both cannot exist simultaneously is deeply flawed.
It is a debate that assumes that one cannot “enjoy the present” while chasing a dream.
It is a debate that assumes that “the present” you get to live without ambition is just as good as the “present” you experience when you’re relentlessly pursuing what you want.
Being ambitious and focused does not exclude you from being able to enjoy the “here and now”. Your life’s circumstances are far more exciting when you’re hustling than when you’re still.
The goal is to see the mountain’s summit, but the purpose is to find the flowers on the way to the top.
What about the looming possibility of failure?
This seems to be what prevents most of the regretful from going after what they want.
The answer: it is not really about whether or not you get there.
The whole point of going after your dreams, is the experiences you will find on your way to making them happen.
You don’t have dreams so that they can unfold as you envision; you have dreams so you could walk on the journey that was meant for you.
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Andrew Gabelic is the CEO & Founder of Teledipity, a free pocket life coach with an eerie ability to send you the right self-improvement content at the right time (based on your personality and life stage). Check out what it says about you!