Dreams Archives | jeremyrolleston.com

Pure Inspiration IV – Sung-bong Choi

I’m in tears as I write this. This is pure inspiration – exactly what I want this blog to provide. To give you and I together another dose of inspiration for our week.

And what a dose of inspiration it is. An example of how your past doesn’t define your future. An example of guts and inner fortitude, but also of good decisions. Consider the courage it took to get himself off the street; the courage to take any singing lessons in the first place; and the massive courage to go on the show when Sung-bong thought he was an average singer (even if he was wrong !). An example of the dignity of a young man and the honest compassion of the judges.

May you be inspired to not let your past define your future and to go after your dreams with all you have.

A whole life context – an exercise for you

It is said that most people spend more time planning a holiday than they do planning their year or the life they want to create. You don’t turn up at the airport and ‘hope’ your holiday will work out – with no passport, no destination and no money. Yet people often turn up to life with exactly that attitude … so here is an exercise to take a step back and think about your life.

Think of your life as a wheel that has many spokes.

On a scale of 1 to 10 (whereby 1 means ‘Not at all satisfied’ and 10 means ‘Completely satisfied’) rank each area of your life and then start to write down how you want that area to be / look / feel / be experienced. Write down your dreams for those areas. Remember to think big and without limitation.

As an interesting side note, in 2004, The Wall Street Journal published the results of a survey on happiness that found that the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans, on a scale of 1.0 to 7.0, rate their life satisfaction at 5.8. The interesting bit – the Inuit people of northernGreenland and the cattle-herding Masai people of Kenya rated themselves the same as the 400 richest Americans in a similar rating of happiness, despite the fact that their lifestyle in all ways is pretty removed from the lifestyle of the Forbes 400. Hmmmm – interesting isn’t it !

Destiny

I love this video because so often we only hear half of the story of following your dreams.

You see there is a myth about highly successful people– it’s that they are simply born highly talented. The truth is, you may be talented, but no-one reaches their potential unless they are willing to work hard to get there. Do you know that only four Wimbledon boys champions in the last 60 years have ever gone on to win the Men’s title in their career (Federer, Borg, Edberg, Cash) and only three girls champions have developed into Women’s champions (Mauresmo, Hingis, Haydon). Did you know that more than 50% of millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college (Robert J. Kreiegel and Louis Patler, If it Aint Broke … Break it ! ). There are no shortcuts to success and anything worthwhile.

You see our dreams very quickly turn into hardwork, commitment, perseverence, diligence, mental touchness, sacrifices, chices and so on. And the thing is, when most people think of hard work, they would rather (and in most cases naturally) take the easy path. Getting fit without exercising. Losing weight without watching their eating. Cultivating good healthy relationships without putting in effort to make them so. Playing a musical instrument well without practising.

Muhammad Ali is quoted as saying “The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses; behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance on those lights.”

Winners do not shy away from hard work. In any arena and facet of life. Not just sport. In fact they embrace it. They train harder and dig deeper than others. They learn to derive satisfaction and pleasure from doing things well in the face of something that is hard. They welcome an environment that is stimulating, challenging and demanding. They learn to enjoy the process and the process inevitably includes hard work.

So whilst I firmly believe we should all Dare to Dream and follow our dreams … that is only half the story.

Destiny doesn’t decide your success. YOU do.

My challenge – What are you going to do to make it happen ?

Mr or Mrs Incredible

Do you remember the dreams you had as a kid? How you were going to conquer the world? How your life was going to be filled with amazing experiences and adventures?

Don’t you find it funny that when you’re a child and you say you want to be an astronaut, your parents tell you that you can be anything you want to be. It’s harmless. Like telling a child that Santa Claus exists.

But when you’re 25 and you tell people you are going to leave work to do x, y or z or when you tell them you want to start to be a x,y or z … the response is different. “Be realistic”. “That is not practical”. “You SHOULD do …. ” And all these comments lead to the same end – you end up doing the things you felt you should do and that in some way force you to compromise those dreams?

What if you didn’t have to live each day feeling like you’ve made a compromise?
What if you actually did what you wanted and dreamt of ?
What if you didn’t have to feel like you were missing out ever again?
How has being “realistic” or “responsible” kept you from the life you want ?
How has doing what you “should” resulted in experiences or regrets for not having done something else ?

I believe it starts with a decision. A decision to actually DARE to Dream. Absolutely, there is wisdom involved and strategy and planning. And absolutely dreams turn very fast into hardwork and diligence and commitment. But this is a mindset. A paradigm. A point of view. And that is the challenge. We think that doing what we love and dream of is mutually exclusive and inconsistent with everything else in our lives – our responsibilities, various financial considerations and so on and so forth. But yet we read plenty of people pursing their passion and making a great living out of it and having the freedom of choice we all want. So it can be done.

So Mr or Mrs Incredible … the challenge is there … and it starts by DARING to dream and follow your dreams …