Five Steps to Get You Closer to Achieving Your Dream
You’ve been working hard to achieve your dreams but you still aren’t seeing results. It can be extremely discouraging; it makes you feel deflated and challenges your own feelings of pride and self-worth.
I know exactly how that feels. For the first twenty-eight years of my life, I knew what it meant to truly struggle, as I continually tried to live out my dreams, only to repeatedly fall flat on my face. I tried to get out there, building startup after startup without any success.
After several attempts, I ended up homeless. As I was being evicted, my grandmother took me in and provided me the opportunity to really find myself. Once I got back on my feet, I moved to LA with a few hundred dollars in my pocket and spent the next year reflecting upon all of the poor decisions I had made that led me to this place. It made me question all of the expectations I had set for myself.
But over the last two and a half years, I’m happy to say that I have completely changed my own luck: I went from being an ever-struggling entrepreneur to an avid influencer within the marketing and branding space. I’m a firm believer that where you are today is exactly where you’re supposed to be. If your hard work isn’t paying off, you need to go back to the start. Because you can achieve your dreams by doing these five simple things:
1. Forget about being the best
When you focus your efforts on being “the best,” a few different things happen: you get discouraged if your work isn’t up to your own standards, you constantly go back to the drawing board to reassess your actions and you set unrealistic expectations, which only leads to disappointment. Instead, focus on creating what you’ve set out to do and don’t over-analyze. Being consistent matters much more than being “perfect” in the long run.
2. Ignore your competition
If you instantly want to feel defeated, watch what your competition is doing. You will see them making great strides in their career.
When you keep such close tabs on your direct competition, it sparks an instant comparison to how you’re shaping up in the same industry. Instead, focus on building your own dream, your own way.
3. Take action
There’s going to be many people telling you how to do your job and all the ways you’re “wrong.”
Don’t listen to any of this negativity. Instead, take action and focus on you. Start building out your dreams by putting yourself to work. Nothing will ever materialize if you don’t take action.
4. Build relationships
Once you begin to take the necessary steps, you’ll want to align yourself with others who are trying to live out their dreams, too. When you build the right relationships, you’ll realize that you share similar interests and priorities with others in your field.
You can’t make it in life on your own. With as many allies as possible, you can help each other achieve all of your individual and shared goals.
5. Improve consistently
The greatest thing about taking action and putting your dreams out in the world is that you’ll get real-time feedback. Is your message resonating with others? Is it being ignored? You will be able to see where your work can be improved and in this way, constantly work to enrich your content to get the message across.
Once I started prioritizing these five takeaways, my grand plans really began to take shape.
Now is the time to be humble and begin building out your own dreams. Make it happen for yourself, because you’re the only person you have to answer to.
The Life Well Lived section is sponsored by The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.
