Why
do people fail to pursue their dreams? I think the answer is
two-fold: Fear and Doubt.
So,
really, the answer is Focus. Meaning, whether or not a person pursues
his/her dream is a function of what he/she chooses to focus on.
If
you focus on short-term failure, you might feel afraid, and you will
likely give up. Mistakes and embarrassment can knock people out of
the game.
However,
if you focus on long-term failure, the feelings of failure you
experience at the end of your life, you will also feel afraid. But,
this time you will persist.
This
is something Gary Vee talks a lot about. He talks about legacy and
your end of days. Somebody once asked him for a few words of motivation and
he said, “You are going to die.”
Starting,
and sticking with it, is also the subject of The War of Art. I
would suggest this is the main idea Steven Pressfield is known for. It is about overcoming Resistance.
It
is the idea behind Richie Norton's book The Power of Starting Something Stupid.
It
is why Guy Kawasaki wrote The Art of the Start.
And,
helping people overcome their fear and doubt is one of the main
topics to which Seth Godin has turned much of his attention.
Recently,
I read a short, little blog post by Godin. And, it struck me as
rather important.
The
post was titled, “The paradox of the flawless record.” Here it
is:
If
your work has never been criticized, it's unlikely you have any work.
Creating
work is the point, though, which means that in order to do something
that matters, you're going to be criticized.
If
your goal is to be universally liked and respected and understood,
then, it must mean your goal is to not do something that matters.
Which
requires hiding.
Hiding,
of course, isn't the point.
Hence
the paradox. You don't want to be criticized and you do want to
matter.
The
solution: Create work that gets criticized. AND, have the discernment
to tell the difference between useful criticism (rare and precious)
and the stuff worth ignoring (everything else).
I will leave you with one last conceptualization. To
put Godin's idea a slightly different way, I think I once heard
Robert Kiyosaki say, “Some of the biggest failures I know are
people who never failed.”
Do
you really want to come to the end of your days with regrets? What are you
focused on?
