Pitfalls To Circumvent In The Pursuit Of Your Dreams (Part 1)
Virtually everyone carries some kind of a dream or aspiration. For some, it is a long-held dream of landing a particular job. Some other person`s dream is to win an Olympics gold medal. For yet another person, it would be a-dream-come-true if he or she earns an MBA. There is, of course, an underground artiste who dreams of becoming a celebrated and award-winning music artiste. Our dreams are myriad and varied. Some dreams are realized with little to no effort. Others require lots of hard work and determination and would demand that we keep pushing for a prolonged period. While some persons eventually attain their dreams and are currently living their dreams, there are those who exit this life without their dreams ever seeing the light of day.
There are those who in the course of time turned their dreams into reality only to make a mess of it. There are however some of us who are dreaming big and still in pursuit of those dreams. Certain factors militate against such pursuits and I have sought to expatriate on a couple of these pitfalls in hope that we would guard against them as much as practicable. Our ability to safely deal with these factors will largely impact on whether or not our dreams will metamorphose into reality.
1. Self-doubt
For some of us, the slightest cogitations of our dreams bring to us emotions of inadequacy, hopelessness, and pessimism. The very magnitude of our dreams by our estimation seems unattainable. We tend to think that such a dream or aspiration is only attainable by a certain class of people. Low self-esteem is at play here and the earlier it is dealt with the better. You will not as much as dare to take a step towards your dreams and even where you have mustered enough courage to take a couple of steps, you backtrack with a bundle of excuses.
For your information, many inventions and notable accomplishments have been the handiwork of some persons who were hitherto considered unintelligent and unschooled. Talk of Thomas Edison the phenomenal inventor, Isaac Newton the brilliant scientist, Beethoven the enigmatic composer and several others. If only you had a true picture of your capabilities, self-doubt will hastily find an exit. You will dream big dreams and work to ensure that those dreams see the light of day.
2. Fear
The fear of failure is crippling in its effects. You have always dreamt from when you were a teenager to be a best-selling novelist and have over time written some scripts but have never dared to approach a publishing house to have your book published. Why is that? Your fear of rejection or failure seems to be holding you back. You fear your manuscript will be rejected or perhaps if even it gets published, the novel will become a total flop. Well, the best antidote to this fear is to take action. Do what you fear to do. Submit your manuscript to a publishing house, in this instance. You may succeed but even if you fail, it may really be to your credit. You learn from your failures and try yet again. Many of the world`s grand high fliers encountered massive initial setbacks and would have been deemed failures if they had not learned from their mistakes, and kept at it until resounding success became their lot.
3. Distractions
Many of us get side-tracked while in hot pursuit of our dreams, goals, and aspirations. We sometimes get side-tracked by a temporary setback. We get side-tracked by events and situations that may have nothing to do with our dreams. However, once we focus on these distractions, our energies that could have been channeled towards the pursuit of our dreams are re-directed towards those distractions. For some, such distractions throw them off balance to the point of dashing their dreams while for others these distractions cause avoidable delays and temporary setbacks as it were. The reality is that we tend to make significant progress while we give our undivided attention to that which we pursue and if only we can maintain such steadfast focus, many of our dreams will be attained, the distractions and challenges notwithstanding. A perceptive mind has aptly noted, “Where focus goes, energy flows” and I perfectly agree with that observation.
4. Complacency
Complacency sets in when we feel we have arrived; the dream is well within reach and that we are so close to achieving our dreams. Complacency may also set in when we attain a particular goal, dream or aspiration. This tends to be the case when we are able to chalk some visible successes in the pursuit of our dreams. Here is this up and coming musical talent who dreams of becoming an international sensation; he dreams of winning international music awards and receiving world acclaim as it were. He has worked so hard honing his talent and branding himself. In the course of time, he wins an award for his phenomenal musical works. The sad reality is that he seems to now think that he has arrived and this gradually begins to take a toll on his work ethic; his cogitations is that he can perform with less discipline, effort and time. Before long, his initial dream of becoming a force to reckon with on the international stage begins to deem. He gradually begins to produce inferior musical works and his musical career takes a nose dive.
The point is this, irrespective of your field of endeavor and your peculiar dream, never get too complacent. You should never get complacent even where you are in reality living your dream. Dream bigger dreams and keep doing what you did that inured to your benefit, bringing you thus far. Perhaps it may even be more appropriate do more of what you did that worked so well for you; invest more time and effort into your craft. Complacency will do you no good. I hope the thoughts I have thus far shared have been somewhat helpful. There are a lot more pitfalls to be considered. Watch out for my next post for a continuation of this discussion.
Written by Daniel Dela Dunoo (Freelance writer/editor, blogger, published author)
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