All you have to do is dream and dare
Life is too short, don’t waste it by constraining yourself and being afraid.
Define your dreams, find them and find yourself.
Just by reading the title of this post, many Medium readers will understand exactly what I mean. Others might think that if life was that easy then it would be known to all and we would all be living in California or wherever sounds like a fancy location and be enjoying a glamorous lifestyle 24/7…
Well the process is that easy: dream and dare are the only two words you need to understand.
The rest is entirely up to you.
Never forget that you are 100% responsible for your own success, no one else.
Given the above statement, you do have to start helping and serving yourself BIG and in the best possible way! And a fantastic way of doing this is to pause from your day to day routine and ask yourself what you would really really like to do and be…
A dream doesn’t have to be as exotic as flying to the moon, it just needs to be something that would make you feel over the moon.
When I finally gave myself the permission to dream and dare big and also realised how powerful this simple process could be, well, I never looked back!
From that moment onwards, I decided to act fast, as fast as I could really so I started running…
My run started when I realised there were too many Sunday evenings and Monday mornings which were sources of mild anxiety or boredom. I was not massively unhappy, I was just not fulfilled and had learnt to accept it as the norm. Most people around me were about the same so it’s not as if there was anything wrong with my situation, at least that’s what I thought.
Then my anxiety grew even more as I started to feel I was wasting my time travelling to work everyday and even being at work as more and more senseless things were being imposed on me. These things only had my employer’s best interest at heart, not mine.
I was in a big conflict with myself at that time as I had always valued hard work from school time and was convinced work should be a source of joy, inspiration, learning, self-improvement and a way of making things better.
When I realised this was not the case for me anymore then I just had to put an end to it and to start running after my dreams big time.
It was my responsibility and mine alone to change things for better outcomes.
My dream, as in, what I knew was going to make me feel 120% fulfilled was to leave the employee’s world ASAP and to start my own business.
After health, your ability to focus is one of your biggest assets.
What really helped me was to have a well thought-through written plan. In fact I had quite a few of them: daily, weekly, monthly and yearly plans. I just knew that formulating plans was going to be a valuable asset for me to reach my dreams.
I also stuck powerful images on my monthly written plan to visualise what I wanted to achieve each month just to keep the motivation and focus going.
Having written plans has kept me accountable. I just love my written plans!
I even started competing with myself by trying to beat the plan and deliver key milestones to myself ahead of schedule. Whenever that happened, it gave me even more strength to carry on and to keep dreaming big.
The time will never be right. Just do it!
It wasn’t all smooth and straightforward. Before I could resign from my comfortable job, I realised I had to buy my own flat first. I didn’t want to keep flat-sharing for an undetermined amount of years as it would have taken time for the business to take off and to start generating a high and regular income (which is what banks tend to prefer when deciding if you can be trusted to pay them back).
So basically, I took on a big mortgage (I live in London, UK, so housing doesn’t come cheap) backed up by my constraining day job and I resigned within a few weeks of moving into my new flat. That was within a few weeks of the June 2016 Brexit referendum vote. Quite a few people told me at the time I should wait and see what was going to happen instead and to hold fire.
Holding fire is fine if you have a few lives to live. I only have one so I could not wait to carry on running.
By the way, I think I’ll always remember my resignation day. I was apprehensive of course… But when I handed in that letter in person, I felt over the moon, overwhelmed with relief and excitement.
It just felt right, amazing in fact.
From that moment onwards, I never stopped running. My dream was too good to give up. I knew I was going to make it all work. For that reason, I never worried about paying my mortgage. Even during the first few months where my limited savings were reducing each week and clients still weren’t showing up, I never doubted my dream. NEVER.
You too, once you have figured out what your dreams are, you will start running, you will never look back and you WILL make them happen.
My resolutions for 2020? Keep dreaming and daring! What about you?
