Ever dreamed of doing something great?
Have you ever felt misplaced or under valued?
Doing something great is a lot simpler than you may think, because you used to feel like you achieved greatness frequently!
Everyone has at one point. Especially when we were kids full of creativity and dreams.
As a father, I’ve been reminded of this truth several times. One night as my sons were laying in bed laughing and talking – I stood outside their room listening.
I heard J, my 10-year-old, say to his big brother, Ry, “Did you know that Jens Bergensten & Markus Persson created Mindcraft because they loved legos?” I heard Ry respond, ” I know! Those guys are awesome! They have an imaginations like us! We could totally do something like that!”
What a powerful declaration!
Bergensten & Persson have sold millions and millions of Mindcraft games. And in Ry & J’s minds, their imagination & potential is on par with the creators of Minecraft! In other words they are peers.
You and I used to believe like that too. We used to turn sticks into laser guns, abandon forts into castles, or old sheets into the grandest of evening ball dresses, cardboard boxes into elegant houses. You climbed on the top of garbage cans, boxes, walls, roofs, and were summiting mountains! You constructed fots, homes, and empires! You saved lives! Thoughts of being a NASA pilot, teacher, doctor, or the next President were not out of reach. Nothing was out of reach!
Then, somewhere along the way, you and I lost it….
Maybe some who mattered to you told you that your version of awesome didn’t matter. When I was in the sixth grade, I dreamed of become a fighter pilot. I read books, watched historical movies , and pretended to fly. It was all I ever did. One day, a teacher that I admired pulled me aside and said, “You know there’s no way in hell your going to be a pilot, right? You know that’s not in the cards for you, right?”
I remember walking away confused…. bewildered and dropping my newly drawn picture of me flying a F-16 with my hair on fire.
As a parent and community coach, I understand the temptation to tell others something like that.
Why?
With this approach to life – whether a friend, sibling, parent, grandparent, teacher, spouse, c0-worker, or boss tells you what you can’t be, they’re attempting to predicting a future they don’t control! they don’t know what 15 or 25 or 35 or 55 or even 65 looks like for you!
What if, when he didn’t make the varsity basketball team his sophomore year of high school, Michael Jordan’s dad had pulled him aside and, putting his arm around a young Michael, said, “You know you’re not going to play college basketball and will definitely never play in the NBA, right? You know that’s not what life has for you? So, let’s go home and take down the basketball hoop.”
To give you a visual perspective watch this clip from the blockbuster movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZb2NOHPA2A
Maybe your mom told you that your dream was too BIG.
Or maybe you’ve been telling yourself that for years – maybe decades.
The way you’ve emotionally and mentally jumped on this bandwagon certainly hasn’t helped the cause.
When you were young, your right hemisphere or “right brain” was in full force. Today, you may find it hard to dream…. Years ago, you embraced curiosity, adventure, and the challenge. Full force and petal to the floor you asked questions and flew at mock 6 with your hair on fire. You were open, learning, and hungry for everything. You had to be unguarded so you could take in everything – even some pain here and there – so you would know how to thrive in this land called reality.
But as we grow older, the other side of our brain kick in. The “left brain” begins to gain a voice and say things like, “That’s impossible,” or, “they will mock you,” or, “don’t be foolish” or, “do you really want to fail and let them down again?” Your left brain plays an important role in your thinking because it is the voice that teaches you to not touch the hot stove or jump off the roof like your a superhero. Unfortunately, it can also make a very logical and compelling argument that what it says is final. As we grow up, most of us came to believe that left brain’s assertions, and as a result we lost the sense that we can still do something great. Instead, we started to believe that greatness was not in the life’s hand for us or that is was illogical or simply a “childish” dream.
The good news is we can recover those childlike notions of grandeur. But it takes more than simply acting like a child again.
Let’s consider taking two simple steps.
1. Write out your definition of greatness? (not googles, websters, or someone elses)
2. List out your childhood dreams and then circle the one’s that sparked something internally.
– OR –
take just one.
1. Admit you’ve been a dream crusher and write down how you are going to make things right?
The road to do something great is still accessible. Now, as an adult, you have the tools to take steps towards it. We’ve been told our whole lives that our 20s are when be begin down our career paths. And our 60s are the end of the road.
BULL SHIT!
That timeline’s NOT valid. Age is no longer the primary factor that determines where you are on the map. Life is now less about how old you are and more about when you decide to live your life out loud…. aka: live in your own shoes, dreams, and aspirations.