In my own life, I have had plenty of advice. Much of it has been good. It wasn’t however until I made a conscious effort to be 100% in charge of my own decisons that I experienced The Feeling of Success. My results are the reward of my own efforts and I have no one to blame for anything. No excuses! It’s a good place to be. I’m still grateful, I give credit where it is due and thank plenty of people for their efforts in helping me. I’m still 100% responsible for my own results.
Choose Your Own Dreams
If you stopped for a moment to consider the things you want in your life, you might be surprised at how long the list is. Whether they are things that will improve your lifestyle or that will simply provide you with pleasure, we all want a lot. Some of it, we may never have, but much of it we will if we work hard and focus on those items as goals. Before you start reaching for certain things in your life, take a moment to consider if the things you want are things you actually want.
Too often, we want things…
Because Others Want You to Have It
Our parents and friends mean well, but a lot of the time, they have ideas for our lives that may not be congruent with who we actually are and what we actually want. But if they tell us a number of times that we ‘need’ something or that we actually DO want something, we begin to put those things on our list of necessary achievements. For example, perhaps you don’t want a house and you’re content to live in an apartment. Just because others want you to have a house, and there is plenty of motivation for you to have that house, doesn’t mean that you really want it. Your interpretation of success if probably totally different to that of your family and friends.
Because You Want to Be Like…
Keeping up with the Joneses is something we struggle with on a daily basis. By taking the time to evaluate whether a certain item is something that we actually want for ourselves, we can begin to stop playing catch up and start bringing into our lives the things that really bring us joy. You want your own, truly unique, empowered identity, not the identity of someone else. Someone else will always have something that you want, but that doesn’t mean that you will actually enjoy having it in your life.
Chase The Lifestyle – Not The Achievement
Know what you want. Forget what others want you to have. It’s your life and as long as you stay ethical, your dreams and goals will be yours to enjoy. Stay focused and keep your mind on the end result. Your lifestyle will be much better if you’re doing the things you ‘really’ want to do. Opportunity knocks on everyones door.
Chase your own dreams… Success awaits us all. Accept it when it knocks on your door!
Sean Rasmussen
Success Communicator
SeanRasmussen.com © 2004 – 2007
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree it important to look at one’s own desires and analyse not only what we want, but why we want it. As you point out, it can be easy to get loaded up with ‘transferred wants’ that either people close to us or society indicate are right, good, desirable, or ‘the way things are done’.
It is all well and good to chase these things if you really want them, but if it is more a case of going with the flow, then it is worth questioning why – why do we want the things we chase, and why bother chasing these things to begin with?
I’ve never been one who has bought into the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ mentality. Frankly, life is too short to worry about some sort of status based race to accumulate impressive things. I’d rather just get the things I really want, do the things I really want to do and simply enjoy myself. Much better than accumulating stuff I don’t really need, to impress people I don’t really like.
The status race can be particularly insidious when large amounts of debt are accumulated. I’d rather own my things and have the lifestyle to enjoy them, rather than having my house/car/TV owning me.
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Why do we not learn at school to make our dreams reality? Or the first step – to find out what we really want? That would make life so much easier and more fun for everybody. But instead we get told to “learn hard, have good grades and find a secure job” (at least most of us), no matter what our dreams might have been.
I think it should be part of the curriculum to learn about finding your passion, goals, goal setting and how to achieve them. As Yang said, “Goals are Dreams with deadlines”
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You know if enough people really want change in our schools and you focus on it, see it, feel it, want it, you can make it happen there is someone who CAN make it happen.
IS IT YOUR GOAL ???
“Be careful what you wish for” was the advice I remember my old grandfather say to me. I quizzed him on what he meant and he started talking about consequenses of your choices. I hadn’t really thought about it until then. Now that I’ve got a few more years under the belt I can totally beleive the truth in what he advised.
It’s amazing when I look back that my life has taken some pretty significant changes and these came from what at the time seemed pretty small decisions.
And yes I agree with Sean to stop basing your decision on what others want for you. I also did that in my younger days when my self-esteem was at a very low level. I was so concerned with pleasing other people that I made some terribly bad decisions that still haunt me today.
Hi Ray
I can relate to what you are saying, I too basing my decision on what others want for me or thought I should do and then had NO self-esteem.
Now I base my decisions on what I want and how I want things to be in the future and now I am growing each day
Agree with this most of all “Know what you want. Forget what others want you to have. It’s your life and as long as you stay ethical, your dreams and goals will be yours to enjoy.”
I have for a longtime listened to others and have followed the path to achieve what society see as an achievement or “making it”. I am now following my own path to fulfill my own dreams and achievements and its been an amazing journey ever since.
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I thought I wanted to relax by the beach and meditate, swim etc. for the rest of my life. But after 3 months of almost continually doing this I got extremely bored and I had to find something to do.
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