Chasing dreams

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” Vincent van Gogh

As we journey through life we are prone to fall into the trap of pessimism, get struck in the rut, believe that failure is an irrevocable tragedy and therefore we do not take courage to think beyond the confines of our perceived abilities and domain.  We are myopic in our thinking, our visualization and our risk taking perception when we get pessimistic and nervous. Yet when we have the urge to think radically, see things differently and imagine possibilities we just need to look at the stars in the galaxy that twinkle surreptitiously and taunt us to aspire to reach the skies like them. While there can be only one moon, there are a million stars that beckon us to chase our dreams and be up there and sparkle every night.

One of the reasons we fear dreaming is that we want to be sure that our dreams will materialize. This is but a catch 22 situation because dreams materialize once we start chasing it. As a result we think small, minimize risks and believe we have limited talents and abilities. On the other hand if we set out to achieve our dreams, then we have at least got started and then we can gather momentum. The other reason we are hesitant to chase our dreams is that we lack the foresight to visualize the scale and success of any dream. We tend to automatically scale our dreams down and then come to the bitter conclusion that it is not worth chasing. We miss out on so many opportunities that way.

Once bitten twice shy is the old adage that is the bane of dream chasers. While failure is hurtful and perhaps very shocking to our psyche, our temptation to succumb to that failure and refusal to attempt again is the real loss for us. We tend to worry, lose confidence in ourselves and worst of all blame ourselves for failure. In this process we are neither objective in analyzing the causes of failure nor are we daring thereafter. No pain no gain is another saying that aptly summarizes the inability of people to chase dreams. Anyone who chases a dream knows that the possibility of failure is embedded in that decision.  Yet most times we try hard to cover all the bases only to realize that competition has got  a head start over us or that we have depleted our resources on frivolous ring fencing exercise. We must have the daring to take chances and calculate risks if we have to achieve our dreams.

Look again at the stars and then we make the profound discover that despite their miniscule size as we see it from here, their light twinkles and catches our attention. We are also aware that they are size able and light years away from us and yet they draw our attention to them. If we look carefully we might even see patterns in them and we know that for centuries the North Star was the traveler’s guide and companion. Can we take inspiration from the stars and find our own north star in our hearts, and map out our own success plans and begin our march towards achieving our dreams?

Remember: “Dreams are like stars…you may never touch them, but if you follow them they will lead you to your destiny.

Try this:

1. What are your three dreams for this world you live in? Now how can you contribute to those dreams? E.g. Save tigers is your dream. Are you spreading this message? Are you contributing or raising resources for it? Have you adopted a tiger in the local zoo?
2. Write down your dreams for the following and after that ask yourself what are you doing to achieve it

• Dream house
• Dream job
• Dream holiday

This post is courtesy www.actspot.com

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