Pursuing Our Deepest Dreams ― by David Shepherd

Your dream can start anytime. Just press START!

There are two schools of thought about whether to keep our most personal dreams and goals to ourselves, or announce them to the world. But if you think about it, only the latter choice makes sense, and only the latter choice is honest.

Keeping something meaningful to ourselves means that we fear either that others will react in ways we find uncomfortable, or that we might fail in our attempt. This is especially true when considering starting a new business. Why take the risk?

But keeping something like that private for either of those reasons, is a tacit acknowledgement that we should be uncomfortable, and should fear failure. Our silence empowers these two powerful and negative impediments.

On the other hand, loudly announcing our dreams and plans to anyone and everyone, not only gives us the authority to proceed, but the obligation to do so. And by making this announcement repeatedly, we begin to rewire the brain in ways that makes the attempt inevitable, the prospect of failure, manageable. We not only move into the passing lane, we floor the accelerator!

Don't be shy to put up your hand & announce your dream to the word.

Over the past ten years, I’ve built a fun and successful business teaching leading edge strategies to small business owners. The risks of walking away from that business—emotionally and financially—are huge. But I’m sneaking up on my 60th birthday, and I simply have not made enough progress on what I most want to do—write books.

A much younger looking David Shepherd. 

So, starting almost two years ago, I began preparing my business for the day that I could walk away. (I refer to this as “making work optional.”) About six months ago, I announced my intentions to the world, telling everyone (including my best clients) that I was leaving in one year.

I told them that I was “retiring” to write books, and almost overnight, everything changed. As they came to believe me, I came to believe myself and the pace of my preparation only sped up. My excitement about my “new life,” only grew greater. And by telling people over and over what I was doing, I wore down any sense of discomfort or doubt they may have had…or that I may have had.

There’s no way to know whether my new career will work, but it feels so good to be honoring what is deepest within me, that I no longer care. Let the chips fall where they may, but I’m pursuing my dreams…

And here's one of the ways David is helping others to pursue their dreams using his vast experience. Click on the image below to check it out.

The SmallBIZ CEOs Audio Newsletter, founded by David Shepherd. 

It's amazing that I came across this article merely hours after I published the previous article. I am inspired about his theory that to not tell the whole world about your dreams is basically a lie. We're always afraid to tell people about our ambitions and dreams because we fear that we will be ridiculed and laughed at, or we fear that we may not get there and thus be looked at as failures.

I can remember being asked the question about what I wanted to be when I grew up and the answer was almost always a contrived one. Most of us gave answers based upon what we'd heard other people say, what we'd seen on TV, what we thought was 'appropriate' or what we thought people would be impressed by. It was never that we actually felt that this was our true calling, that was felt with a passion.

In my experience as an educator, asking that question in class was almost frowned upon by the students, because it's was kind of uncool to have hopes and dreams. A few select students were always willing to answer but most were either embarrassed or unsure because they had not really thought about it. Who can blame us as kids at being embarrassed or insecure?

As adults, we sometimes continue the trend but maybe for different reasons. We now know more about the kinds of careers or vocations that are available to us and we're a lot more knowledgeable about our abilities (although I cannot say this for all adults). The fear that we might not be able to fulfill our dreams can make us keep our dreams literally bottled up and close to our chests, but I find that we may also be afraid of competition for our dreams. I don't know whether I'm accurate with this last assumption. You may correct me or give me your perspective in the comments. Indeed I would welcome more discussion on this topic.

Success is yours for the taking. 

The clincher in terms of inspiration from what David brought up, was that announcing your dreams to the world makes the dreams or the decision to pursue our dreams tangible. It's almost like we're obliged to make them come to fruition because of the announcement. We can use that as the motivation to carry out what we said we wanted to do. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that an eye-opener or lightbulb moment? It certainly is for me, how about you?

For those of you who are still unsure about what you want to do here's a graphic which has always inspired me in my moments of doubt about anything I want to pursue, ANYTHING!! I do hope it is useful.

How to decide on a win-win situation for your success. 

Article Source: http://smallbizradicals.com/, March 15, 2013, followed by my own comments.

Be blessed,
Sam Maramba