Dreams and Reality

The Desire

It has always been one’s desire in order to achieve his or her goals. As per Abraham Maslow, self-actualisation sits at the top of the hierarchy. The main criteria in order for oneself to achieve self-actualisation would be:

1. Identify one’s potentials
2. Live them out
3. Master them

This leads to desire. Everyone has desires or goals which he or she would like to fulfill during his or her lifetime. Through the the process of identification of goals and achieving them, one finds his or her self-worthiness and what it means to be oneself. Also, he or she would be able to associate with other peers who potentially share the same goals and work together to obtain the same achievement together.

Not only self-actualisation is a self-rewarding stage of life, it also complements the Fourth Need (Esteem) and Third Need (Love and Belonging). Due to this, one is driven towards actualisation discovery regardless how long it may take (from months to years or even a lifetime).

The Road to Dream-Realising

Upon realising the goal at hand, one would work out plans and ways in order to achieve it. From conceptualisation to execution, many form of paths will be experimented just to find the one that leads to the goal. Not to mention, finding mentors who one can look up to and also reading the journey undertaken by such mentors provide an additional nudge to continue to stay focus on the dream.

The Stumbling Block of Realism

Reality starts to kick in at the early stage of feedback gathering. This is when one shares with even his or her close friends or family that what he or she set out to achieve. Naturally, they would provide advices which highlight the detrimental effects on going against the norm or the herd.

Looking objectively, perhaps it is just the human mind’s tendency to remember negative things stronger than positive ones. Having said that, we may just project what we deemed correct and our experiences which relates to his or her dream.

Not to mention, when one breaks down the plan to manageable crumbs, the journey which may seemed quite short, is unexpectedly longer than before. The effort required to continuously pursue the goal and the long term focus is enormous. At times, after spending from hours to days to weeks and months, one would raise this question:

Is it really worth it to pursue this?

So, there are really two forces at play here:

• The external environment
• The inner-self

The Continuous Journey

When all seems bleak, it is good to let intuition to take over the rational mind. One would just shut the rational mind which continuously feed information based on external environment (which may consist of noise and signal) and the inner-self and let the gut-feel come to play.

The wonderful thing about intuition is that it is akin to one’s inner-call where lies one’s hidden potential. Let it take over in a controlled manner can yield a powerful personal compass yet let it run wild and the after-effects are not to be trifled with.

Scott Adam, the creator of Dilbert, has a great proposition. He shared that rather than being goal-oriented, one can opt to be system-oriented. That manner, changes the perception if a goal fails. One can pick up lessons learnt from failures and apply them to the next-big-thing.

As for the one who dreamt of a dream which transpired to a desire and goal(s), having to face the stumbling block of reality is part and parcel of the adventure. In the end, if one maintains sufficient focus and listen to one’s inner-self, that alone will set one apart from those who dream and work towards it and those who dream and do nothing about it. Such is a wonderful journey which lies ahead.

What a reminder to myself.