Most of the time, your dreams outpace you. To keep up, you have to run faster. That’s actually the most difficult part, and many people don’t feel they’re good enough, brave enough, fast enough, or smart enough to do it, and they never accomplish their dreams. But that’s all in our heads. The only difference between realizing our dreams and not is the simple belief that you can move your legs fast enough to keep up. If you know with every fiber in your body that you can, you will.
There are a lot of layers to peel back here, but all of them uncover a crucial premise: the confidence to do it. Having that confidence is not something everyone is gifted with. Dare I say very few people are. I certainly don’t have it. I have, however, found a great substitute. That substitute is the confidence that I can learn anything. I can learn to run faster, make smarter decisions, and be better, in whatever I do. Indeed, I know with every fiber in my body that I can learn to keep pace with my dreams.
Building the confidence that you can learn anything is far easier than developing a deeply grounded confidence in everything.
All you have to do is start learning something.
It doesn’t have to be anything difficult; you can work your way up to that. In fact, it should be something just challenging enough that you can experience success with it. You don’t get off the couch and go run a marathon; you get off the couch and run a mile.
The important thing is that learning becomes a part of your life, in whatever way possible. Make it a habit–part of who you are. Read a book before bed, be curious, do something that you’ve never done before. I’m certainly not saying that it is easy.
On the contrary, challenging ourselves forces us to learn and grow and it is, of course, a challenge. But with time, the action of learning something isn’t a chore anymore and learning simply becomes a way of thinking and living differently. Instead of saying, “I don’t know how” or “I can’t”, we say, “I’ll figure it out” or, “I’ll try”. In my case, I didn’t know how to start a business, or how to build websites. I did, however, have the confidence to try. (Luckily my wife had that confidence too.)
As I write this now, I’m not sitting in a place where all of my dreams are accomplished. In fact, I still feel like they are always just out of reach. But I do write this from a place of confidence–a place of confidence that I can learn what I need to keep up.
