4 reasons you’ll never realise your dreams - part I

It’s high time to say sorry!

I’m sorry that I’ve been bothering you with my ‘live your dream’ spiel for so long now. It was very naïve of me to believe that you could realise your dreams too. Just because I got so lucky in my life… of course that couldn’t happen to you. Our world just doesn’t work that way. Thanks to Paulo Coelho I now understand it. His book The Alchemist really opened my eyes. There’s actually four reasons you’ll never realise your dreams:

 

1. Education. School. Society.

As a kid you can’t help but dream: you want to become a professional footballer, musician, actor. You want to travel the world, learn languages, write books. Your parents make it clear to you early on, however, that it’d be better for you if you stop dreaming. They don’t want you to be disappointed. They never fulfilled their dreams so why should it be any different with you:

- “Life’s not a walk in the park.”

- “Enjoy it while you’re young, life’s hard enough as it is.

- “Study something sensible so that you’ll have a job at the end of it.”

 

Sounds familiar, right?

Words are powerful things. Such conventional wisdom makes itself comfortable in your subconscious and it’s all you can do to get it out again. On top of this comes conventional schooling that tells you to stop dreaming right away. Instead of being able to learn what interests and excites you, you have to learn what someone thought up ages ago. And you don’t really learn it either. At the most you learn it off by heart – you don’t learn for yourself, you learn to pass the test. Best case scenario, you cheat your way to a good grade, at least that takes some creativity and courage.

School isn’t there to assist you pursue your dreams, it’s there to prepare you for our system. And that system can’t begin to deal with dreamers, free spirits or unconventional thinkers. They simply don’t fit in. When you graduate school or university, you’re spat out as just another finished product from the conveyor belt. Normalised and tested, exactly how the customer, that is the economy, is eagerly awaiting you.

 

2. Fear of letting go.

If in the extremely unlikely case that in spite of the three obstacles of education, school and society you’re still in a position to follow your dreams or if you’re the one in a million and your parents and your school have fostered and encouraged you, you’re still in line for hurdle number two: letting go.

As a dreamer you’re going to be going it alone most of the time. No one understands you; “Why can’t you be like all the others?” You’re a dangerous mirror for those around you. If you’re doing YOUR thing, people around you ask themselves deep down whether they shouldn’t also be doing their own thing. Or they don’t – analysing and knowing yourself requires far too much energy and swimming against the current is far too risky.

So while others stay in their comfort zones and wish you on your birthday that you ‘stay just as you are’, you’re searching for change and self-fulfilment. It’s exactly here that the biggest challenges come into play: you have to break out and change your environment. Realising your dreams can only happen when you’re surrounded by like-minded people who understand you and support you on your journey. Not by pessimists and moaners who drag you down and stand in your way.

BUT: Letting go also brings with it the fear of losing something.

 

For example, your workspace – or as the famous Austrian actor and comedian Roland Düringer puts it, your income place. You have to earn some money to be able to function in the world and you want to be able to treat yourself every now and then: a new car, a holiday in a nice 4-star resort, a new flat-screen TV, a new smartphone or simply a shopping afternoon with your friends.

But have you never asked yourself whether you really need these things? Is it possible you JUST THINK you need them? Maybe because it looks so great in the advert or because your friends have the same thing? Maybe just because it’s cool? Could it not also be the case that you work (far too much) to buy things that you actually don’t need?

If the pessimists and moaners are your friends or even worse your partner, it will start to get complicated. Now you’re not only afraid of losing work or money, you’re afraid of losing people that are close to you and who you care about. You’re suddenly afraid of losing them because they’ll no longer understand you. The more you follow your own path, the more distance you put between them and yourself. You still see them from time to time because you’d have a guilty conscious if you didn’t. You’ve lived through so much together and were always there for each other but you now find you just don’t have that much in common. Anything more than small talk is no longer possible.

And it will get a whole lot more complicated if these people are part of your family. You can choose your friends, you can choose your partner but you can’t choose your family. That stays forever.

If you’ve managed to conjure up every ounce of courage you have and are still following your own path, you’ll find sooner or later that you’ll never lose the most important people in your life. You may no longer see exactly eye to eye on everything but if they love you, they’ll accept this and will be happy for you that you’ve found happiness. Your relationship to these people will be different but different doesn’t always mean worse. And the other less important people will leave your life and make room for new friends and acquaintances. Also, if it’s your family that still aren’t standing by you on your journey, you can’t change them but you certainly can expand on them. You can make everyone who’s dear to you part of your ‘cosmic family’.

>> Part II: Reasons 3 & 4 <<