Dare to Dream

Everyone has their dreams, no matter who you are or what position you are in. Whether it is that you want to be in a better situation than you are now, or you dream to have more money, more freedom or more happiness. Then you have the dreams that you have formed that you set as goals and work towards, like starting a company or starting something new like a career or hobby or you want to create something to show who you are, like a book or vlogs or podcasts. Dreams can be small, or they can be big.

Some of them seem less complicated when you have a long time scale. You tell someone you want to be financially stable, have a family, be happy in 30 years time and people like the idea. You tell people that you are going to be a millionaire by the time you are 30 and they laugh at you and tell you to stick to something more realistic. And that goes for a lot of dreams people can have. And people aren’t afraid to laugh at you either. No matter who you are or who they are, people are happy to tell you not to do whatever it is you want to do. Well, when does this issue arise? When you are younger people tell you to follow your dreams—you can be anything you want. This is when children have visions of being a fireman or an astronaut, policeman, actor, singer and whatever else children dream to be. Hell, at that point they can aspire to be a spy or a pirate or an explorer or a super hero and the adults tell them to go for it. Why? Because as a child you have so much potential. It is all you really are, you have no experience of the world to form you into who you’re going to be. When you become a teenager and you go into secondary school or high school, you start to become more of a person in the world, you experience more things that start to “shape” your future, people see you and start to form their opinions based on how they see you fitting into society. So say you aren’t doing great: you are either failing or passing badly. Well, now what? People see a lot less potential. You are failing school. That must mean you aren’t smart and you don’t have the potential because this is a world where the smarter you are the more likely you are to proceed, because you can finish school with good grades, you can go to university, maybe even a PhD and then get a great job that pays well. Alright then take it out of school, people still see your potential as limited based on where you are. You have a PhD in maths? Then you can’t do art because you’re a mathematician, not an artist. You failed school? How could you think you have the ability to start let alone run a company when they are so complex and require so much?

Alright so, let’s take a moment to look at successful people who have great stories. Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, Open AI, Boring Company, PayPal), Gary Vee (Vaynermedia, wine company), Jeffree Star (Jeffree Star cosmetics, beauty guru). I am going to focus on these three because I know them the most.

Okay so Elon Musk, when he started Tesla. How many people laughed at his idea, slagged it off, said it wasn’t going to work, and gave it a very bad word. Most people, including the news, and already successful people. And at times it seemed likely, he had to save his company multiple times from bankruptcy. Imagine having a dream and being told by your friends and family (most probably I do not know for certain), as well as the media which also means strangers, people who don’t even know you, tell you to give up on your dream. Well in 2018 he took his electric car, that everyone laughed at, put it on a rocket, that his company SpaceX built, and launched it into space. Successfully.

Alright, so Gary Vee. He did not do well at school, and he will tell you. He has his grades framed on his wall. Teachers and parents said he wasn’t going to go far in life. He was also an immigrant. To them he practically had 0 potential. He worked in his father's liquor store, and managed to grow it into a multi-million company using Google, and then took advantage of social media. He then created a company to help other businesses capitalize on social media and has more than $130 million in revenue. But he had no potential.

Jeffree Star, he wore makeup, and in 2009 that stuff was not highly accepted as it is now. He was big on Myspace (social media craze a while back) and had a 6 year music career. But it went bad and he ended up bankrupt. He took his life savings and started a makeup brand, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, and started making videos on YouTube. He now has 15 million subscribers, and a multi-million company.

What would have happened if those three people gave up, or stopped when people said they should, or when things got really hard to the point they had no money? Well you could say, but Elon is really smart, but Gary had his family supporting him, but Jeffree had natural talent with makeup. People didn’t know that, though, until they did what they did, and they expressed their knowledge and talent to pursue their dreams. You have no idea what people are capable of. You have no idea what the people around you are capable of, even if you know them, if they are your closest friend you have no idea. You probably don’t even know what you are capable of because you haven’t allowed yourself to find out! So who the hell are you to tell someone they shouldn’t or can’t do something, especially when it comes to aspirations? Why shouldn’t people have dreams, and then try and go for them? What’s the worst that could happen, if they don’t succeed they will most definitely learn a great deal. Is it that you are so afraid of failure, you don’t even like the idea of other people failing? Maybe when someone tells you their dreams and goals that they wish to set out and aim for, if you are someone who is critical and has every doubt in that person, you should just shut up and listen and hear what they have to say. Maybe you should try to help, and ask them what plan they have or any ideas they have in how they can achieve their goals, so that if on the chance they do succeed they think back and remember you as one of the few individuals who supported them even if it was just words of encouragement rather than one of the many who shot them down and made their journey that much more difficult.

I think it can be important to know what people are saying when they are being critical, their doubts that they express are problems you could actually face, so in some cases it could help you come up with solutions (I would advise against telling them your solutions as they will only try to find more problems) but be careful what you listen to, and try to find people who support you so it isn’t just constant negativity. Don’t think your dreams are too big or too small. Don’t think you need lots of money to start. Don’t think you are alone either, because you aren’t. Just because someone doesn’t share your dream doesn’t mean they are on a similar path on following theirs and trying to aim for something better. Find those people and support each other. Because there are a lot of people out there. Social media allows us to connect with those kind of people. It is hard, and bigger goals and dreams are even harder than hard. Don’t let that put you off, if you want to do it, go for it. Break it down into smaller steps so it becomes more manageable. You don’t have a dream? That is perfectly fine. There is a lot this world has to offer, there's so much you can have its hard to find something that you want and that you want to strive for. So again, start small. What would you change about your position right now? Increase your income? Go out more? Spend more time with your family? Do you know what you can do to achieve that? If not, try asking, both yourself, someone, you could even Google it. Although it won’t give you a straight answer to solve everything, it will give you the information to figure it out.

Aim for what you want. Do what you enjoy. If you pursue a dream and you stop enjoying it, it’s perfectly okay to try something else. What’s important in that moment is what you have learnt in the process. Don’t let those who can’t pursue their own dreams drag you down. Or anyone else for that matter, no matter who they are or who they are to you. Dare to Dream.