Your Dreams Are Worth Chasing
Don’t let anyone tell you different
Stop defeating yourself. Better yet, stop letting others talk you into defeating yourself. Stop it. Now.
I shared this message just yesterday in one of the more unlikely places I will ever mentor someone: in the Amazon help chat. Long story short, I ordered a couple of things through the world’s largest online retailer recently and they never arrived. I sent a “WTF?!” to a faceless agent named Bryan, and the conversation very quickly took an unexpected turn.
I’m in the military, and apparently Bryan always wanted to be. Since my shipping address corresponds to a stateside military base, he asked me how long I’ve been in the service. For whatever reason, he decided to share that it was a childhood dream of his to serve in a similar capacity, but his parents actively discouraged him from doing so by telling him he was too cowardly.
He stated that believing them was the greatest regret of his life.
If we’re being honest, there is a robust debate to be had about whether Bryan proved their point by believing what they were saying. Since I only have one admittedly very brief side of the story (after all, I was just trying to get the stuff I ordered), I’ll say that at the very least, Bryan allowed external opinion to dash an internal desire.
Don’t be that person.
I dealt with a similar situation in my early adulthood. No one in my family had ever graduated college, and I was trying to be the first. Several members of my family, who were bitter about their own lack of success in this area, tried to discourage me from pursuing a degree. Their arguments went something like this:
“What makes you think you’re better than the rest of us?”
I don’t know the context of Bryan’s story outside of the very brief explanation he offered, but in my own case, I was being buffeted by people in my life who were disappointed in themselves. I firmly believe that lack of self-worth informs lack of self-motivation. I also believe that this particular disease has a way of traveling down the family tree from generation to generation, poisoning every branch along the way.
If this is you, then be the one to stop that parasitic chain of destruction.
Not every dream is attainable. Let me get that out of the way right upfront. For instance, if your dream is to win the Powerball and retire in the hills, you might want to find a more realistic one to chase. Ditto marrying a famous actor/actress and having lots of babies with them.
Your attainable dreams — the ones that really gnaw at your insides — are almost always informed by organic passion and ability. Chase. Those. Do not let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. If you really can’t do it, then find out by trying.
Don’t be afraid of failure. It’ll happen, and in most cases that is actually a good thing. I have learned more from failing than I ever did from sitting on my duff and doing nothing.
Hockey god Wayne Greztky said it best:
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
It took me 17 years, a crap-ton of student loans, and a world of grief, but I eventually did become the first college graduate in my family’s history. I didn’t succeed because I was better than anyone else — I succeeded because I didn’t believe them when they told me I wasn’t good enough. I only wish they hadn’t believed that lie, either.
Hopefully, sometime later this week, I’ll get my stuff from Amazon. That dream has yet to become reality.
Frank Vaughn is an award-winning journalist, Soldier, husband, and father from Little Rock, Ark. His next goal is to be a fulfilled Amazon customer.
