Bold statement comin’ at ya…
With great dreams comes great adversity.
I think a lot of you can relate because many of you are small business owners, entrepreneurs — you dream BIG.
And there’s always going to be someone who tells you, “No, you can’t do that.” And, sometimes, it may even be you who says you can’t do it. That’s actually a good thing…
Embrace the suck. Embrace the challenges.
What would a dream be worth if it was too easy?
I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard that when Walt Disney was with his board of directors and creative Imagineers if he’d present a plan or a dream and it didn’t receive any objections — he would scrap the idea…
He wouldn’t do it because in his opinion, if it didn’t have any objections or any kind of criticisms, then he wasn’t dreaming big enough. If there wasn’t some element of, “Oh my gosh, you can’t do that,” or “It’s impossible” or “There’s no way!” — then he wouldn’t do it because it wasn’t a big enough dream.
So, your dreams need to have somebody who says, “Nah, you can’t do that.” (Now, I’m not saying you should surround yourself with people who tear you down and pull down your dreams. In fact, my last email was all about doing the opposite!)
My point is: It’s ok if you dream big. Just be prepared for obstacles.
A quick personal story about this. So, my wife and I weren’t able to have kids naturally. We tried IVF and that didn’t work either. So we decided to adopt it. We were dreaming big because we wanted kids so much.
The adoption process is bananas. TONS of paperwork and TONS of money. Stress. Challenges. And a million hoops and obstacles to jump through. It was emotionally, financially, and mentally exhausting.
But remember, with big dreams come big obstacles.
And it was all worth it, we happily adopted 4 children.
We also had a dream to homeschool our kids. And a dream to travel around the world with our kids while we homeschooled them. Of course, you can imagine the challenges of that.
As for business…
When I was slummin’ it in my corporate J.O.B., I had a dream to work for myself, have my own business, call my own shots, do whatever I wanted to do, work when I wanted to work. A dream to work from home.
I made a lot of mistakes, spent a lot of money, did a lot of bad deals that I shouldn’t have done.
But, I persisted, overcame those challenges, blasted through them — and looking back at it, I didn’t feel like I was victorious and blazing an amazing trail.
I felt like a wounded warrior fighting through it, picking myself back up, falling down, taking 3 steps back and 1 step forward — but refusing to quit and give up.
Being a successful business owner and entrepreneur has tons and tons of challenges.
Now, if you don’t want to grow — personally and professionally and spiritually and physically — then you’re not going to have any challenges. You’ll just avoid them, quit, redirect.
If you want to grow, you’ve got to face those challenges.
With great dreams come great challenges and difficulties, but that is good. Embrace it.
You’ll be better for it.
