We all begin to have big dreams as early as we begin to have thoughts of our own. We dream of doing great things that align with our inborn passions. Even when there are still greater things we could not think of when we were very young, those early dreams hold a significant meaning for what we want to do in our lifetime.
As interesting as our big dreams might seem, not everyone achieves them. Research has shown that only 8% of people achieve their dreams in their lifetime. The rest, 92%, either give up or fail to take a step. Many people give up on their dreams because they think they are too big to achieve; many others lack the courage to start in the first place.
However, pursuing your dreams and achieving them can make you very satisfied in life. It makes you feel happy that you have fulfilled why you were born. On the other hand, not achieving your dreams can make you feel unsuccessful or unfulfilled with your life.
In achieving your dreams and bringing them to life, you need to know what makes the 92% of people who fail to achieve their dreams fail, and what makes the 8% who did to be able to achieve them. Whether your dream is to start a global business, impact people, establish a tech company, or whatever it is, this post will show you what you need to achieve your dream.
Factors That Can Affect One’s Ability to Pursue One’s Dreams
Certain challenges can come in the way of achieving one’s dreams and bringing them to life but it is important to look beyond the limitations and find a way out as much as possible. In the end, none of the challenges will be genuine-enough reasons to not achieve our goals and dreams.
But also, it is important to point out some of those factors or challenges that may affect us in the achievement of our dreams and lifetime goals. These boil down to these four things: resources/materials, finance, knowledge, and the motivation to start.
1. Finances
The majority of people who did not achieve their dreams would attribute this to insufficient money in the form of startup or running capital. While this is a very valid limitation, as a study revealed[1]Dreaming the Impossible Dream: Low-income families and their hopes for the future – ResearchGate, the 8% of people who achieved their goals are those that did not allow lack of finances stand in their way. Instead, they created a viable financial plan to sustain their dreams.
2. Resources
In achieving your dreams, you might also require some resources. This will involve tools, land, house, etc. But if you have the right determination, the absence of any resource will no longer be a deterrent to achieving your dreams.
3. Knowledge
Many people are afraid to venture into the path of their dreams because they don’t feel confident enough to start. They are afraid to fail due to insufficient knowledge without realizing that successful people don’t wait till they know everything they need to know before they start.
4. Confidence to start
When the above factors are not in place, it can feel difficult to start pursuing your dreams. But even when you have everything you need, taking the bold step requires something more. Motivate yourself to start. Don’t fear failure; face it. And when you fail, rise again.
Reasons People Fail to Achieve Their Life Dreams
Being successful in the area of one’s dreams, goals, and ambitions, requires one to have an inner determination and drive to achieve those dreams. Successful people largely take their fate into their own hands.
Among the common reasons why 92% of people fail to achieve their dreams are the following.
1. Lack of discipline
Starting to pursue your dreams is one thing. Staying determined to continue despite all odds is a completely different thing. Many distractions will come your way when you are pursuing your dreams.
You may want to spend more time with your friends, go out together, or do things everyone else does but what you need to realize is that you don’t behave like the crowd and expect to be different. You may have to do things differently and that requires discipline.
For example, even if you love sleeping or watching movies a lot, think about what those wasted hours could help you achieve for your dream. You need to stay disciplined to be willing to pay the sacrifices now. Remember, every sacrifice you make to achieve your dreams will be worth it eventually.
2. Lack of clarity
Not having a clear plan for achieving your dreams is one reason why many people fail in the pursuit of their dreams. It makes the journey blurry and uncertain, but this is usually not enough reason to quit.
Clarity comes from consistency, persistence, and dedication. You might not know everything you need to know yet but you can work with what you know, taking one step at a time.
Sometimes you feel unsure about the future. You reason if this is going to work out or not. What if you end up wasting your time and nothing comes out of it? These are common questions but there is only one way to find out. Thankfully, clarity comes with time if you don’t give up.
3. Lack of patience
Many people lack patience when pursuing their dreams and life goals. This can make them give up midway into their dreams.
Nothing good comes easy, so the saying goes. But additionally, achieving success in your dream does not happen overnight. There will be times when your efforts do not seem to yield the desired results. You may feel stagnated and unable to move forward. All of these are completely natural but you must stay patient with your dreams without giving up on them.
4. Lack of focus
I talked a bit about focus when discussing the power of determination in achieving your dreams above. Focus is your ability to concentrate on your dream in the midst of the growing distractions around you.
In a world where there are so many distractions, and instant access to varying information, communication, and entertainment, one needs to be laser-focused to get things done efficiently. Many people fail because they are not able to keep their attention on their goals.
Your dream may seem so far away but staying focused on it can bring it back to your consciousness when distractions or challenges strike. Focus is like working with the end in sight. When you envision what you want the dream to be, this can fuel your inner fire and determination to keep working at it.
5. Living life to fate
If you are determined to succeed, nothing or no one can stop you but one reason why many people fail to achieve their dreams is because they put their destiny in other people’s hands or let situations dictate for them. Doing so will come at a serious cost to your dreams.
People will disappoint you. Situations and circumstances will discourage you. These are inevitable, but the courage to take your life into your own hands and keep moving forward is what makes the few people who achieve their dreams different.
6. Not believing in yourself enough
Steve Jobs once talked about the people crazy enough to think they can change the world. You need to believe in yourself against what everyone else might think. Making a change and becoming successful at what you do requires you to have a strong belief in your ability to do so.
To others, your belief in yourself might seem delusional because they don’t see what you see but you need to always tell yourself that “I can do it, and I have all it takes”.
If you wait for others to believe in you first, you might never amount to a quarter of your dreams but when you decide to fully believe in yourself, the sky only becomes your starting point.
7. Inability to handle failure
I recently published a quote on my social media, “That thing called failure, succeed at failing. There is no such thing as having never failed before. It is the courage to rise above it that matters.” The truth is that anyone who tells you they achieved success without failing at least once is saying so for some self-promotional reasons.
We all experience failure in different ways and at different times in our lives. Whether it is an inability to attain your set goals, or a clear loss of your progress made, handling failure and moving forward is how successful people achieve their dreams.
When you fail, fail forward because some of the greatest lessons of success are learned from failure by someone who handles failure as a tool for success, rather than a reason to quit.
Ways to Achieve Your Dreams & Bring Them to Life
The previous section talks about some reasons why people fail to achieve their dreams. In this section, we will explore some practical tips for achieving your dreams and making them come true. These will place you among the 8% of people who achieve their dreams.
1. Start planning early; avoid procrastination
After a while of thinking about your dreams and ambitions, it is right you start now. Begin with making your plans and how you want to achieve them, remembering that every step counts no matter how small it may seem.
Planning early and being proactive with your plans also sustains your passion for your dream. Not having thoughts about your dreams can make you lose the fire for achieving them, which can result in the early death of the dreams. Also, making plans prepares you adequately to spot an opportunity when it appears.
This will involve asking questions like “What do I need”, “When will I start”, “What do I need to know or have”, and “How can I get them”. Don’t wait for a specific time to start planning or at least thinking about your dreams.
2. Stop dreaming now
Whether you have made adequate plans or not, sometimes you need to take proactive steps to achieve your dreams. No one ever figures everything out before they start, if they do, it might be too late.
Whether you have all the materials and resources you need or not, now is the time to stop dreaming and take action. Remember, it will forever remain a dream if you don’t act on it now.
3. Don’t get scared of your dreams
Sometimes, people are scared of their dreams because they fear that they can achieve them. This makes some people give up on their dreams or scale them down to smaller ones they think they can achieve. But you are as big as your dreams, not less, which means you are capable of achieving your big dreams if you believe in yourself.
Every big journey begins with small steps. Achieving your big dreams boils down to taking one step at a time. While it may look small, it sets the pace for the one that comes after it and the next after it.
4. Keep pushing despite the challenges
Even when you start, it doesn’t guarantee a smooth ride but you have to keep doing what you do and find ways to improve. As long as you don’t stop pushing, you will begin to improve until the journey to success starts getting clearer.
Some common challenges include lack of visibility, insufficient money to get what you need, plus the fact that you are not seeing profits from what you do. But if you keep doing what you do, you will eventually start seeing returns and satisfaction from pursuing your dreams.
5. Always find a way out
Determination is finding a way out when there seems to be no way because there is always a way out. No matter what challenges you may face when pursuing your dreams, have at the back of your mind that there are no dead ends.
When faced with challenges, one needs to have a growth mindset to succeed. A growth mindset sees the journey as a process towards the goal and is not discouraged by the present situations. In contrast, people with a fixed mindset only see the problems and forget about the goal.
As a medical student with a very busy schedule, I was able to establish this website some years ago. There were many challenges and some people who started with me have given up as I speak. Determination is what keeps you going when everything seems to be against you.
I’ve also seen many other people who pursued their passions despite the obvious challenges. One such is Gimbiya Galadima, now a medical doctor who also pursued her writing passion when she was a medical student, publishing her first book and writing several contents online. Another is Okorigwe Samuel, also a medical student who is pursuing his passion in the art of drawing life pictures despite the challenges of medical school.
I know of several other people from other walks of life who pursued and are pursuing their dreams despite the challenges. The one thing I am sure about is that they will get there if they keep pushing. You too can.
6. Stay patient; don’t give up
There will be a thousand and one reasons to give up but patience is a virtue. Patience is an expression of determination and willingness to try again when you feel like giving up.
Circumstances might force you to bow, and people might say things to discourage you. But you don’t expect anything different when climbing up the steep hill. It is the reason only very few people make it up there, and if you don’t give up, you will certainly get there.
6. Rise again, no matter how many times you fail
Again, failure is an inevitable means to success if well handled. Failure can point you in the right direction or teach you lessons you never could have learned any other way.
When you fail, it is okay to take a while to grieve but during this time, you should be more focused on learning what you can do differently. Many people end up grieving all through and telling themselves they were not destined to succeed at it. But that is not true.
No matter how many times you fail, there is always a lesson in each of them. These lessons have the potential to take you to the next level and make you succeed in whatever you are involved in. Thus, no matter how many setbacks you encounter, look beyond the failure and find the lessons. In other words, fail forward always.
Final words
Achieving your dreams and bringing them to life does not often come so easily. There will be challenges along the way but with patience, determination, and focus, you can overcome the challenges and rise to the top.
The process is not a smooth ride which explains why it has been estimated that only 8% of people achieve their lifelong dreams. I hope that with the above tips, you can be among the few people who bring their dreams to life.
Thanks for reading, and see you at the top.
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