Someone asked me for advice recently on following a dream. This is a topic I spend lots of time discussing with friends.
I’m one of those people who live my life following my dreams. It is often like feeling my way in the dark. Always, I am unsure how things will turn out, but I pay attention to all the "signs" along the way to see if this really is the route for me.
At the early stage, a dream needs protection, a cocoon. Carefully select where you discuss it.
Party-poopers and pessimists will never lift off on the wings of a dream, not their own nor anyone else’s.
Some people just stomp on dreams like they are smashing grapes with their feet. These people are best saved for last, after the dream is fully rooted and you’ve had some experience overcoming the obstacles.
However, that’s not to say that you want to leap off the edge insisting you can fly by arching your eyebrows swiftly. It helps to get reality checkers.
Reality checkers are those people who have succeeded at living the stuff of dreams — not even necessarily your kind of dream, but succeeded in achieving their own dreams. These folks can give great pointers.
Following a dream requires doing combat with fear. Some of the fears are illusions, but they pop up and must be conquered nonetheless.
Some of the fears are fortified blockades. Common blockades are not enough money or time to learn the skills required, or needing to relocate. A relocation dream is one that can only take place in the South Pacific.
I have just completed a two-year battle through blockades to pursue a dream so it’s all fresh in my mind.
For almost all of my life I wanted to be a writer. I attended writing workshops, spent time on weekends and at night writing, read books to inspire writing. This process went on for years. I am embarrassed to say for how long.
And I was pursuing other things all during those years. Other dreams.
Following a dream takes a whole-hearted commitment.
Capturing a dream, holding it close enough to do it, involves letting the dream inhabit your life. If the dream is put up too high on shelf, it becomes impossible to reach. I kept putting my dream too far out of my reach.
Don’t put your dreams too far into the future. We don’t know what tomorrow brings and dreams are the first things to be cast aside in the face of reality.
One of the things that helped me finally get my arms around my dream was attending a workshop where a group of artists shared how they paid their bills, managed their lives, raised their children and made a living pursuing their art.
It wasn’t the "art of writing" that had my flummoxed, it was the art of paying the bills.
Saving the money to cover the bills became my goal. Rather than sitting up late at night writing stories, I watched over my checkbook like a scavenger bird every day, looking for money to put in savings.
Overcoming that barrier became the tipping point for me. I am a full-time writer. There is a point in any fight for a dream where a particular victory determines the outcome.
There is a difference between people who like to talk about following their dreams and people who actually live their dreams.
Talkers are often comforted in the talk. They don’t need to seek out reality checkers. They just need to carry dreams with them, in their pocket, to help them get through the day.
People who make their dreams real work a strategy daily to learn skills, save money, relocate and face fear.
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