So, you want to be a venture capitalist, write a screenplay, or open a Victorian tea garden like the one you visited once in London and never forgot. So, you want to do anything slightly risky that demands a personal vision.
You? ... You? says the voice, as it collapses on the floor in gales of laughter.
Who do you think you are, anyway?
For many of us, this is where the conversation about pursuing our dream begins and ends. Because, let's admit it -- we're sensible people. We’re not the sort who takes huge, wild risks. We’re not the slightest bit visionary. We don't have a lot of high-minded thoughts that keep us awake at night, and God knows we don't know the first thing those other, more successful people must have known before they set off to realize their dream. We're just ... us. Basic. Flawed. Certainly nothing special.
Actually, when you get right down to it, we think we don't really even deserve to have a dream.
Still, we do have this niggling idea that keeps surfacing and resurfacing, begging to be explored, teased out, played with, and realized. We otherwise staid individuals do have to admit to oddly ambitious stirrings we don't completely understand. So we do what we have always done: we ignore them.
After all, we're just not the kind of people who go off half-cocked after some so-called dream. Right?
The truth is that people with creative impulses need to create, no matter how "uncreative," sensible, logical and otherwise unimpulsive they consider themselves. People with a pressing idea have an obligation to express it. And yet we almost never do. We subscribe to a weirdly common belief that no one wants to hear what we have to say. No one wants to know about our great new idea, patronize our business, attend our productions, or give us any kind of a break. No one. We feel as if the world were just waiting to flatten us with some great, universal sledgehammer.
This is the soft, dark underbelly of all dreams, the part that's hovering in the shadows, hoping to derail you. And, this is the first and seediest demon you will have to confront. The really annoying part is that the demon is you. All that imagined rejection is nothing more than your own twisted imaginings. When examined in the cool, rational light of day by other, more benevolent people, your own contribution usually merits a much greater response than you could ever imagine.
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