Dreams and Goals

July 21st 2017

What crushes someone’s dreams, especially when it’s a sapling of a dream? It depends on your personality and inner nature. Some of us need a lot of external support in those early moments and some of us thrive when we are told it’s impossible. In the video below we explore both tendencies including inspiration from Salma Hayek and the young scientist, Boyan Slat.

This week we’re talking about support. How much support do we need from others around us in order to succeed in our goals, in our dreams, and creating the vision that we have for our own life? It’s an interesting question and I think the conversation gets divided between the school of thought that… you know, a very supportive environment helps you thrive and the opposite.

What I feel it comes down to is your own inner nature and what you individually need as a person to thrive. What do I need to thrive? And when you figure out what that is, you can surround yourself by it. And not everyone needs a lot of support. Not everyone craves it. Not everyone is looking for it. There’s an internal drive that fuels a person’s energy. That can be enough. They don’t need anyone else’s energy to help them thrive.

I was listening to an interview with Salma Hayek who’s one of my all-time heroes, and she talks about how there’s so many projects that she’s wanted to get up off the ground, and when her heart is in a project and she has a vision for it and a dream for it and it’s very different from anything that’s ever been created before, it’s a struggle to find support in terms of money, in terms of people’s belief, in terms of writers… just you need a team to help a dream come true. And it’s a battle when you’ve got a vision of something that’s never been created before to influence people to come on board with it. It’s not easy to get that kind of support.

There was one thing that she said in the interview that really struck me. She said I had heaps… She was talking about Ugly Betty and how it took so long to get Ugly Betty off the ground and it was years of campaigning and the story of how it happened is quite phenomenal, but one thing that she did say is that there were heaps of doors that were closed on her, but what fuelled her, what energised her with adrenaline to get it done was one person saying “This cannot be done. This is impossible.” And something just clicks in her mind of “Ah, I’m going to show you.” I am going to prove everyone wrong that this can be done. And that’s her internal nature, that’s her inner nature to do something different and to prove that yes, it is possible, yes, it can be done and the vision in my mind can manifest into form. And so she used that to her advantage and made it a positive and went after her dreams fuelled by the negative comments of others.

So that’s one kind of personality, that’s one side of the argument. And then the other side is it’s really nurturing and supportive to be surrounded by people that support your dreams. And if you have that internal nature of that outer encouragement and you need that, then avoid people that crush the sapling of your dream when it’s still a sapling, that I’m not there to water it and care for it and tend it to help it grow or to help you grow it.

An idea, a dream, a vision, a goal has its infant stage where it is just a tiny sapling, and it needs a lot of care in order to survive and more attention and care in order to thrive and grow. And if those comments are going to crush it and those comments become louder than your own inner voice, your own internal dialogue, then those people need to literally be filtered out of your life, and you need to make a beeline for the people that encourage you and say look, I don’t know how you’re going to do it but I really think you can do it and I believe it’s possible and if anyone’s going to do it you’re going to do it because I see drive in you. And you get that external validation and external support that then boosts your own inner inspiration and motivation to get it done.

Not everyone needs external support, and it’s really important to dive in and figure out for yourself what kind of support do I need, even with a person like Salma who thrives on you know, one huge person who’s got all the influence and power saying this cannot be done, and that awakening her drive to get it done, to show the world and in particular that person that yes, this is possible, even she would need other voices around her to just let it grow, but she takes charge of that to find what is needed for her to reach her dreams.

The main takeaway from this week’s message is what do I need, ask yourself what do I need in my life around me that will help me move towards my dreams and towards my goals. And if you’ve got a rebel personality, acknowledge it and thrive on it and find the fuel in it and look for you know, evidence of people feeling like what you are after is not possible… is just not possible, and use that as your inspiration to create something new and to find a way to do it and to be really resourceful and use your own inner instincts to guide you where you need to go, to get something made that’s never done before.

And if you’re on the other side where your idea is in infancy stage, like it’s just a sapling and it needs some watering and it needs a community of support, then find your community and bring them into your life and really value them, really value what they say and use that nurturing to help you move towards your dreams.

Another beautiful soul, this beautiful person that’s walking the Earth that truly inspires me and he’s so young is a guy called Boyan Slat. He is I guess an inventor and a scientist and he was inspired to clean up the ocean of plastic, to get rid of the plastic in the ocean and to take on that challenge, regardless of all scientific evidence and popular opinion to the contrary that it’s such an impossible task that it’s going to take thousands of years or hundreds of years or it was a phenomenal amount of time that was previously predicted for how long it’s going to take to clean up the ocean of plastic. And he just was adamant that it can be done much sooner, and he just found a way to do it.

He had the belief, the belief was so strong, and his instincts were strong in which way he needed to go to find the information to get the solution. And I’m going to put a link in the comment box below to show you where to go to find information on this young gentleman who’s just completely inspiring. And he’s taken a pilot, a prototype of this whole system of cleaning up the ocean and now it’s launching soon in the oceans. I think he started in the Pacific Ocean and cleaning up the garbage there.

There are different ways to be motivated and there are different ways to feel supported, but it is really up to you to figure out what you need and to get it for yourself and to know what kills your dream, to know what disheartens you, and to know what will just crush it for you and to be clear about what that is and avoid it and filter it out, to just be the protector of what you’re trying to create and what you want to have in your life.

So, that’s it for today. It’s all about support. And on the other end when someone comes to you with their dream and someone shares… It’s such a vulnerable thing to share your dream with someone, because there’s often no evidence to support it yet, there’s no evidence to show anything for it. It’s just in the thought form. There’s nothing real about it yet except what you’re talking about. And when someone comes to you and shares their idea or their dream, they are… acknowledge that they’re being quite vulnerable in doing that and they’ve placed a lot of trust in you when they talk to you about it. And how do you respond, how do you respond, how do you want to respond? And also think about what they need in order to help them grow their dreams and be an advocate for them.

We’re all about helping each other grow and supporting each other at Three Cups Full. It’s really important. It’s important to be strong for yourself and then strong for others, and that is the message of this week’s video blog, how to support yourself and how to support others.

It would be really interesting to know what everyone’s dreams are out there and what seemingly feels impossible at the moment, so drop me a line or a message to share what your dream is and what it feels at this moment in relation to reality, so it’s a dream and reality and see how far it feels away. It might just feel like it’s just about to blossom or it might feel like it’s like a huge distance away, but this community is all about supporting each other, so share your dreams.

Watch Boyan Slat’s TED talk HERE

Sharanya

xx