Be Aware of and Beware of Dream Stealers
When you have a dream of creating something, for work you love to do or the life you want to be living, then protect it, nurture it, believe in it and do not listen to anyone’s negative opinions.
Image Credit: Chinmayan
My painful experience with a dream stealer.
Once upon a time, when I was a young man seeking to fulfill my dream of using my writing talent to help the world, I had a vision for creating a new line of unique greeting cards for people going through heart break and grief.
As I lived with this vision day by day, I felt the growing call on my heart that the cards I was seeing in my mind and beginning to sketch out and design, were needed by many, many people who would get much comfort and healing from them.
I spent two years working out my vision, designs for the covers and the sweetest, most touching writing for the message inside, along with the practical details of how to make them beautiful, what special papers to use and the best printing company.
As a last step, when I heard that there was a major greeting card and gift show in town, I decided to go for whatever I could learn from browsing and talking with small card companies who were already making and selling cards.
I wish I knew then what I have learned from bitter experience since about dream stealers.
After spending a few hours browsing, my last stop was a the booth of a small card company. A silver haired man invited me into his booth, and asked me what I was doing at the show.
I made a serious mistake by opening up to him about my vision and my plans. I showed him my portfolio of finished card designs, which I believed were beautiful, special and needed by the world.
He seemed genuinely interested, asked questions and seemed about to offer me some pointers or good advice.
Instead he bluntly told me that if I persisted with my plans, that I would certainly fail because the realities of the market is that its saturated by big companies who make it hard on little ones to sell anything.
He also told me no one would care about or want my cards, that I would lose my shirt to paper and printing costs…he went on and on with one discouraging comment after another.
Because he was in the business, I took him as an authority that I needed to listen to, which is a common mistake when dealing with and giving our power away to dream stealers.
I left the show in a dark depression that shook me deeply to the core of my being into a state of complete discouragement. I gave up my dream, which was very painful and stayed with my old familiar work, which I no longer had any heart for.
I stored away my portfolio and forgot about it and my lost dream until I found it in the bottom of an old box many years later.
As I looked through it, realized that the designs were actually very good and would have been very successful if I had marketed them myself, just as my vision had been showing me to do.
This would have led to me living my dream life as a writer and publisher, which now, almost forty years later, I am finally doing full time.
Its tragic that I lost so much simply by listening to and believing the words of a dream stealer.
Be Aware and Beware of Dream Stealers…
Dream stealers will come to test your dream, to see if you are strong enough, clear enough, invested enough and confident enough to not listen to them or be affected when they say “It can’t be done; you can’t do it, you ain’t got what it takes to do something so bold, so wonderful and great…”
Dream stealers may seem like your true friend offering you their heartfelt advice. They may be your parents or relatives or a close associate. They may even believe their negative, discouraging commentary is helping you avoid a mistake…
but if you want the life you are dreaming of, that’s been placed on your heart as something you need, want and will do anything to achieve, then simply reply to the dream stealers who come in all disguises…
“I have much better things to do than listening to you! I believe in my dream and will fulfill it so mind your own business!’
As the old saying goes, “ Those who say something is impossible should get out of the way of the one who is already doing it!”
Protect your dream.
Nurture your dream.
Only share your dream with the few who truly know you, believe in you, who love and care for you and who say…
“I believe in you, I know you can do it and I will be at your side every step of the way and stand with you when its your turn to stand in the winner’s circle someday!”
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Image Credit: Inner Resource Institute's Still Mountain Meditation Center
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Excellent read, thanks for the story!