Sometimes you find yourself with a goal you really want to achieve, but you just never take any action towards it.
Maybe you have no time, the stars are not aligned perfectly or “your mom won’t let you”. Maybe you’re just too tired, too hungry, too horny to do anythingright now…
Or maybe you are taking action, but all of the actions you take are just procrastination in disguise:
• Making business plans or doing more “research” on how to make it work
• Making things but not sharing them with the world, because they have to be “perfect” before you throw it out there
• Creating a note in your phone to make time tomorrow to find the right moment you can dedicate to making plans to make plans for a brainstorm meeting
Even if you can’t recognize yourself in any of these situations, deep down we all have an ideal vision of how we would want our life to be. If some genie came up and gave us the chance to magically fix everything, you’d sure know what to wish for 😉
Logically, you’d expect then that we would all be working hard every day towards creating that ideal life for us.
So why aren’t we?
1. FEAR OF SUCCESS
You read it right. The internet is filled with motivational quotes about “fear of failure”. But the truth is, failure doesn’t exist. It is literally impossible to fail. You can only:
A) Succeed
B) Die
C) Decide that you will stop trying (this doesn’t have to be a bad thing).
I truly believe that fear of success is a much more common reason people are not making their dreams come true. We just don’t know it because it’s a rather insidious and deep-rooted subconscious fear.
“Why in the world would I be afraid of achieving my wildest dreams?”, you might ask.
The thing is, when we dream of something we only imagine the aspects of that life that appeal to us the most. But when you succeed at creating an exciting new life that is totally different from the one you live today, it will be exactly that: Totally different from the one you live today.
A lot more will have changed than the one aspect you are focusing on. On a subconscious level you know this. And if you don’t like some of those changes, you will either sabotage yourself or not work hard enough. Because the truth is that deep down you don’t want to achieve the dream.
Here’s some examples of changes you might not have considered for pretty “standard” dreams that most people would like to achieve :
GETTING IN PERFECT SHAPE:
• Having to maintain a healthier lifestyle to keep the change permanent (Diet, working out, etc.)
• Not being able to eat your favorite comfort food every day
• Often having to explain to people why you are eating healthy (as if it’s a weird and unpleasant thing to do)
• The money you need for new clothes when the old ones no longer fit
• Getting hit on more often, including people you don’t want to attract
Are these changes unpleasant? Not really, they don’t seem unpleasant to me. But if you don’t like them (or if you like eating pie even more) you will hold back from achieving this dream. Since there are more aspects of the dream you don’t want than the aspects you actually want.
BECOMING IRRESISTIBLY ATTRACTIVE:
• Also becoming irresistible to people you DON’T like
• Getting approached constantly when you really want to mind your own business
• Some of those people being very pushy
• Not knowing if people value you for your personality or not
• People acting uneasy, jealous or intimidated around you
• Since “irresistible” is pretty radical, possibly even rape?
HAVING LOTS OF MONEY:
• Getting bothered by people who want to borrow from you
• Those same people giving you a bad rep when you don’t
• Not knowing whether people like you for your personality or your money
• Getting judged by a lot of people (maybe even yourself) who hold negative beliefs about the wealthy
• Having to manage lots of money
• Feeling the need to protect yourself from people who want to steal it
Achieving success in an area where you are lacking now will change the way every one you know looks at you and relates to you, for better or worse.
You will lose friends, and people who used to be strangers will be drawn closer to you. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing but it will happen.
You think your friends and family are loyal to the bone and this will be different for you? It may be true, but it’s more uncommon than you think.
Even small changes like quitting alcohol, changing jobs or getting a sex change have a significant impact on a lot of your existing relationships.
It’s surprising but actually pretty simple. Until you are ready to embrace all the different implications and changes that will happen once you live your dream, you will not take action to make it come true.
If you want the tequila, you better get ready for the hangover too ?
2. A LIMITING SELF-IMAGE
You know how people with very low self-esteem keep getting into relationships and situations that are clearly VERY bad for them? We are all like that in a way.
Even if you have very high self-esteem you are still like that. I’m still like that. There is simply no denying it.
However “big” or “small” our self-image is there is a point where it ends, an “upper limit”, so to speak. Once we reach a certain level of success (in any area) that we feel is more than we deserve as a person, we will subconsciously do something to sabotage it and drag us back to the level we feel is correct for us.
We will even anticipate and not take the necessary actions that would help us reach a more fulfilling life than our current self-image is willing to tolerate.
That’s one of the reasons why victims will often be victims over and over again. Unless they are ready to stop seeing themselves as a victim. I know because I used to see myself as one. It’s also why people who win the lottery rarely stay rich.
We all have a limit we put on the amount of success or extraordinary behavior that feels “right” to the person we see ourselves as. The only question is: Where is yours?
If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you should do is work on yourself to become the kind of person that could make those dreams come true and truly feel comfortable living them.
After all, who else will do it for you ?
3. BEING ADDICTED TO THE COMFORT OF MEDIOCRITY
Why do you have the dreams you have? Because deep down you feel that if you would live that life it would make you feel great.
Whatever it is that you fantasize about (I don’t wanna know), it would probably take some time and consistent effort to make it come true. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a dream, it would be real already ?
At the same time though, you don’t need that dream to become real in order to feel good. Society has already taken care of it for you. You can always just pick a job that fits your personality in some way and go to work every day. Now you have a steady income which enables you to buy stuff that makes you feel good.
This is only short-term satisfaction instead of the deep lasting fulfillment living your dream may give you. But then again, you always have enough money to consume something else after the feeling passes.
You do have to trade in a lot of hours to get that money so you miss a lot of the beautiful experiences you’d encounter day-to-day in your ideal “free” life. But don’t worry, even that’s taken care of:
When you sit in your house after work you have a screen where you can watch all kinds of other people doing interesting stuff or portraying the kind of exciting stories you’d want to have in your life. When watching them, you empathize with those characters, so you feel a sort of “light-version” of the emotions you would really feel if it were to happen to you.
You might have a nagging little voice in the back of your head sometimes, telling you that there’s so much untapped potential in you. That you want something more than all of this. But the good news is that most of the things you consume get that voice to shut up again for a while.
It’s a safe bet. If you follow the rules, you get the reward. Maybe you don’t get the “pure and uncut” super exciting version of life. But you will get just enough mediocrity to not make you feel terrible all the time.
On the other hand, building the life of your dreams is largely unexplored territory. Whatever they are, you will have to figure out yourself how to make them come true. That means making mistakes, dealing with the results, and constantly exploring the edge of your comfort zone.
A lot of what you dream of may not even be very socially acceptable. So you’ll have to learn to deal with criticism and rejection too.
If this sounds like a lot of work without the certainty of success, that’s only normal.
Extraordinary goals take extraordinary actions, mediocre goals take mediocre actions. The bigger the reward, the bigger the risk you have to take.
Since you read this I’m pretty sure you want the reward…so simply put: What are you willing to lose?
You can’t jump in the water and keep your feet on the edge of the pool at the same time.
But that water sure looks like it would feel nice, doesn’t it? ?