Whose dreams are you following?
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Make sure that the goals you are headed for are truly your own
Just about everyone has dreams. They help people imagine the way ahead and keep their courage and motivation to carry out their goals. But sometimes we lose faith in ourselves and ability to set our own path. Our own dreams don’t seem exciting enough, so we begin taking on someone else’s instead. And there are always plenty of folk just waiting to sell us their dreams in place of our own.
Every special-interest grouping, from religions to environmentalists and political parties to social-action activists, wants you to take on their dreams as your own. Parents and families offer dreams to the next generation; often ones that they either failed to fulfill, or never found the courage to try. Fashion is mostly about shared dreams; so are movies and television shows. The media offers exciting dreams of all kinds, full of secondhand thrills and safely avoided dangers. Almost every advertisement you see is offering a dream, merely for the price of the product. Buy what’s on offer and be healthier, sexier, slimmer, or richer.
The dream industry
Those who are skeptical about the industry that has grown up around people’s wish to improve their lives often dismiss it all as wish-fulfillment: people living out their dreams through attending courses and seminars, while their daily lives remain largely unchanged.
They can be some truth in this. Before you embark on any change or course of self-improvement, you should be certain you‚Äôre doing what you want to do, not simply buying in to some ready-made pathway to Nirvana. Selling dreams is one of the oldest — and easiest — ways to manipulate large numbers of people. Every snake-oil salesman preys on the insecurities of customers, urging them on to buy with glittering visions of what they might become — and only for a few dollars.
Make up your own dreams and make sure you turn them into action
Are you ready to make significant changes in how you act, not just in how you‚Äôd like to act? Until you put your dreams into action — thinking, speaking and behaving in new ways — you haven‚Äôt altered anything. Don‚Äôt kid yourself you have.
Following someone else’s dream is a fraud that will lead to frustration and disappointment. Find your own, even if it‚Äôs humble and unspectacular — especially if it‚Äôs like that.
Dreams don’t have to be grand to be worthwhile. Far better to achieve what‚Äôs right for you than wreck yourself in the attempt to live out someone else‚Äôs fantasy.
Whose dreams are you chasing?
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