Countless writers, inventors, and explorers have had to face this dilemma: do I push ahead with what I see in my mind’s eye, or do I let the scoffers win?
I’ll be the first to admit it can be a challenge when you have a big idea, and you know that family, friends and colleagues may mock you for it, scoff or try to talk you out of it for various reasons that will sound eminently logical.
But on the other hand, there’s that dream of yours, calling to you. It won’t leave you alone. You can try smothering it, but it pops up in little whispers. Many people, probably most people actually, push away that dream long enough and firmly enough that it shrivels from neglect and only reappears for a deathbed scene of regret.
We learn early on to be practical about our goals, to not strive to achieve much more than we are pretty darned certain we can get, given our skills, expertise, experience and education. We turn away from the biggest goals that make our eyes light up, and settle for less. It’s more realistic, right? And when we witness someone living big, we watch and we yearn and we admire them—athletes, musicians, artists, adventurers, company founders—but we repeat the old mantra we’ve heard so many times: they’re lucky.
We also learn to tell ourselves we don’t have time for the commitment it would take for all that achieving, and again, we settle for less.
What if the opinions of others didn’t matter? What if you could build up enough confidence in yourself that when someone scoffs, you would just politely dismiss it and keep on going? How would that feel? It would feel pretty special, wouldn’t it? So how do we get to that place, how do we gather the kind of confidence that we need to stand by our own dreams and defend them and keep going when others give lackluster support if not downright criticism?
We look within. And we access the eternal spirit that is the real “us”—an undying being of light and energy that came to Earth to experience joy, love and expansion, but then forgot that was the whole reason for being born. And began settling for less.
Start living your greatness. Make a decision for yourself and your dreams, and that elusive sense of confidence will be drawn to you like you’re a magnet, without your having to go in search of it.