Why are you not living your dreams? What is standing in your way? What is stopping you from living your dreams? Do you want to start living your dreams today? Do you have a dream? If you have one or two, how big, how inspiring, how motivating?
Big dreams motivate people to do more. Small dreams do not motivate people to stretch themselves, because there is no energy in them. If you want your dream to move you to action, it has to be a big dream.
The number one thing that is stopping people from living their lives is FEAR. Fear has rendered people useless. Fear has prevented people from reaching their destinations. Fear has paralyzed people from moving forward. It is not lack of talent that is crippling brilliant people. It is fear.
Fear is stealing people’s dreams away from them. We fear everything in life. We fear talking to people we don’t know. We fear success. We fear failure (the big one). We fear what people will say about us (another elephant in the room). We even fear ourselves. We fear promotions. We fear celebrations (small or big). We fear criticism. We fear doing new things. We fear creativity. We fear everything. Yes, we fear everything under the sun. The question is: “Why?”
Fear is not real. What we fear is not real. It is self-made. It is created in our minds. If you want to face fear, take action. Actions cure fear. Actions put fear to rest. If you want to be successful in life, you must face your own fear. Yes, your own fear, not my fear. Because we fear different things. Your fear is not my fear. My fear is not your fear. Fear is unique. You cannot be successful if you don’t have the courage to face your fear. If you have the courage to face your fear, you have conquered it. It will surrender to your request. If you face fear, fear will be powerless. It will not have power over your dreams. It will not have power over you. You will be the winner, and fear will be the loser.
If you don’t have the courage to face your fear, you will not have the courage to succeed. Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist, says, “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” This is one of the reasons people don’t do well in life.They are afraid to fail. They don’t want to make mistakes. If you don’t want to make mistakes, you don’t want to succeed. Period. To succeed in life, accept failure as a part of the game. Life is a game. Summer Redstone said, “Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.” Failure is part of the journey to success. If you want to succeed, be ready to fail. As John Maxwell said, “Failing Forward.” It means when you fail at something, get up and move on. Don’t stay there. If you do, it means you have really failed. I hope you will not stay there.
People don’t succeed in life because they fear what other people will say about them. They don’t do anything because they fear what other people will say about their projects, their jobs, their lives, and their ideas. But you cannot succeed if you keep paying attention to naysayers. They are naysayers. They are nearsayers, not realsayers. The realsayer is you. They will always have something to say about you. That is their daily job, not yours. So, why worry? Success comes from criticism. Let them criticize you. Be ready to be criticized if you are to succeed. As Joyce Meyer says, “If we try to build our lives on what people say and think of us- how they treat us, how we feel, or our past mistakes- we are building on sinking sand.” Let people keep talking. You keep doing great things. Don’t listen to them. If you do, you are giving them a weapon to crush you with. Keep moving forward, not backward.
If you want to succeed, it is on the other side of the bridge. It is on the other side of fear. It is on the other side of the road. As George Addair observed: “Everything you’ve wanted is on the other side of fear.” To succeed, to live your dreams, to live and enjoy your life, you have to confront your fear. No one will do it for you. You are the only one who can change your life, because you are the master of your life. You can only be the master of your life if you face your fear, if you face what you fear the most.
Fear prevents people from doing their best work. You cannot succeed without doing your best work. No one will pay you handsomely for a terrible job. You get paid handsomely for a handsomely done job. You need your best work to succeed. Fear keeps people in their comfort zones, even though nothing good ever comes from staying in your comfort zone. It is just a comfort zone. It makes you comfortable, but unproductive. If you want to do great things, get out of your comfort zone. Make yourself uncomfortable to grow, because growth is not comfortable. If you want to grow, be ready to be uncomfortable for a while. It is temporary, not permanent. Growth is change, and change is not funny at all.
Fear prevents people from stretching themselves, because they are scared of making mistakes. Instead, they keep doing the same, old boring stuff over and over again with no progress. They have succumbed to fear. As a result, they would rather stay where is comfortable than to take risks. The result: no growth. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”
If you want to grow, take action. If you want to conquer fear, take action. Actions cure fear. Actions cure everything. Take action!
