Maybe it’s just me, but the culture of us average people tends to drag dreamers from their visions in the clouds back down to earth. If you say you’re going to be a millionaire in five years, they scoff at you. If you say you’re going to be a musician, movie actor, or author, the average person smiles on the outside and rolls their eyes on the inside.
Even if that’s not your common reaction, you’ve probably been told before to tear down your dreams, be realistic and lower your expectations. And there’s a time and place for that – if you’re waiting for a perfect guy or gal, you should probably open your eyes and look at the great one right in front of you.
But low expectations breed low results, and that’s awfully dull throughout most of life. So here’s an alternative:
Instead of quashing your dream, plan out how you’re going to make them happen and then start working.
Dreams don’t fail for lack of vision, dreams fail for lack of planning and hard work.
Three Paths to Success
I’ve found three camps that people fall into when it comes to actually doing something with your life.
- Do something small that you are guaranteed to succeed at. Then try something bigger, and work your way to the big stuff. Eventually, you reach your original impossible dreams.
- Do something so ridiculously big that you aren’t sure you’ll actually be able to do it. Get as far as you can – it’ll probably be further than you think – and even if you fail, you’ll still have achieved more than you would have sitting at home in camp 1 or camp 3. (Probably.)
- Try to come up with a foolproof way to do something perfectly the first time. You’ll be lucky if you do anything at all.
You’ll notice that the camps that actually manage to reach their goals are the ones that involve actually doing something, whether they fail or not. (Hopefully you’ve also noticed my taint of sarcasm. I’m going to try and drop it now.)
Instead of giving up on the dreams that matter to you, do something to realize them. If you want to end world hunger, you don’t have to go to Africa and feed a whole country – carry an extra $10 in your pocket when you go out, and buy someone a meal if it looks like they could use one. (Alternately, for $10 a month you can feed one child for a month. For transparency: the link goes to a religious charity.)
I know a random voice from the Internet doesn’t have much authority in your life, but because it might be the only voice that you hear say this…
Dream big. Work hard. You may have boundaries, may have limits, but you can overcome many things before you get stopped for good in the cold ground.
Rock hard! \m/ If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. You can always send thoughts, suggestions, and questions to justanotherhalfling@gmail.com as well 🙂 Thanks for reading!
Just Another Halfling 