I have several friends in their late 20’s who after embarking on ‘the safer’ option when it came to their career have now decided that they want to follow their original dream. If you’re not happy with your work it is inevitable that at some point you will think ‘I wish I’d have done something different with my life’. It is no surprise to me that so many of my former school mates or work colleagues are deciding to take control almost 10 years after beginning their working lives.
Imagine if they would have had the courage to do so when leaving school, college or university? How far along the line towards their dream would they be? Why didn’t they go for it?
There are several factors that cater for the answer but the main one all relies around self belief. Whether they themselves believed they had the capabilities to make what ever they wanted to do become a reality, despite the bad advice from parents, teachers and friends. Could they ‘live the dream’?
The answer is quite simple, ‘yes’! The best thing is that we all make bad choices from time to time but those choices can be corrected with a little courage.
As we get older we gain more responsibility. We buy houses, start relationships even add to the world’s population. All these things can become excuses when attempting to ‘live the dream’.
‘I can’t because I’ve got a mortgage to pay’
‘I can’t because my wife doesn’t earn enough money on her own to look after us all’
‘I can’t because I’ve got kids to think about’
If you are at School, college or University reading this and the things above don’t apply to your life (yet) then you have no excuse. Go with the original positive thoughts in your head and chase what is rightfully yours. For everyone that is reading this nodding, thinking about doing something they really want despite the ‘excuses’ above then my advice (whether you want it or not) is this.
There is no point ‘dipping your toes’ in to see if it is viable when attempting to make your dream come true. Putting 10% of your time into something will only get 10% of the reward back. If you are going for it then give it everything you’ve got, get ‘both feet in’. If that means quitting your current full time job, working for free, getting a Saturday job, spending all your savings or all of the above then so be it. The dream is worth ALL your working attention.
Will it cause arguments with your loved ones? Yes
Will it put me under financial strain? Yes
Will everyone think I’m crazy? Yes
Achieving it will be worth all the pain.
The second bit of advice is regarding … timescales. Forget them.
The amount of times I’ve heard people say ‘give it a year’ or ‘give it 6 months’ is unbelievable when they’ve been dishing out advice to friends. We are talking about your dream! There is no timescale on this. It’s here when its here. How do you know how close you are to achieving what you want? The answer is that you don’t, so I have never understood the ‘give it a year’ approach. It’s like swimming the English Channel getting three quarters of the way there, deciding you’re tired and swimming back! Keep going!
All that I’ve written in this blog is a lot easier SAID … than done, hence only a small percentage of people I know are doing for a living what they dreamed about doing when they were younger.
The equation for success (Intensity x frequency) is easy to write but carrying it out? That depends on the attitude of the individual.
Good Luck x
“Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson