Once in a while, a winner will come out to encourage the enthusiastic youngsters to pursue their dreams. Recently, one of the lucky Steve, Wozniak is asserting again. The first time you listen to it, you are thrilled to act immediately. Hearing it several more times, you will feel bored of the fixed pattern. I really hate to listen to ideas that repeat again and again, and this great Steve does it, and so did others. Anyway, the other “Steve”s are Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer. Anyone wants to be called Steve?
The journalists rarely interview and much less likely boast the people who pursue their dreams and failed. Apparently, a winner always proclaims his victory on a pile of corpses turned and twisted. Yet, taking into account reality attributes such as charisma and right timing, chances are that there are multiple factors than perseverance that places a person as a victor. But, we must admit most of them have perseverance.
Among our minds are different dreams, each with varying difficult goals. When we are motivated, we talked in enthusiastic manners as if dreams alone feed a person. That is not true. Once the enthusiasm falters, you await another turn of recharging of motivation. These successful people having been through such stages prior to success, must know the fact, too. Telling you to go now to pursue your dreams is nonsense because it is something that lasts a brief moment only. Then, why do they assert rubbish once and again? To understand this, instead of treating them as mere rubbish, these redundant speeches must share some traits that allows itself to duplicate itself again and again all the time. We have to find out why they assert rubbish.
We must find out what were they before they succeeded, and more importantly, what happened to people who did not succeed.
Dreams Are Not Food
A dream of travelling around the world and having a day-job is one of the nastiest combination you can have. Mainly, the average day job only offers you some ten to twenty days of annual leave each year. Going for a three-month trip? Mourning for some non-existent family for months? That is not going to work anywhere I guess. Maternity leave seems a great excuse. But we don’t have babies all the time. Besides, some of us are guys. So, that is out of the question. But then, travelling is fun! However, it is not going to work too well when you have kids who need to school, or your wife or husband is at a important career stage and cannot afford to miss the opportunity, or your parents who need your periodic caring, or the company that cannot afford your absence for even a week. Just consider these people you love so much, you probably do not want to make them unhappy or leave dare consequences just because you want to be happy pursuing your dreams. Summing things up, your responsibilities to make people you love happy will prioritize themselves before your dreams, regardless of its importance if you truly love them. So Randy Pausch is right, and luckily he managed to achieve them before passing away, but that does not happen for a lot of people. Therefore, as responsibilities accumulate, motivation and dreams alone do not give you enough courage to overcome the fear of dare consequences to take the action. Now, we know at least a good number of couples are going to ignore those fancy speeches.
Now the problem becomes obvious. Responsibilities. We do not want to risk failing our responsibilities as a son or daughter, or as a husband or wife, or as a father or mother. As it turns out, after talking to a lot of elders who have had dreams mostly gave way to family, and it is almost natural to them. They tell the youngsters like us that they are too old for it. Too old? They certainly not mean just physically because not all dreams are age-restricted. However, we were told of various responsibilities that urge us to keep ourselves in a stable state, and then try to pursue the dreams if the dreams is close to our daily path. Take hackers as example, it is well known hackers are usually youngsters. As mentioned in Pwnie Awards, truly, their career effectively ends at age 30, for family or other dreams. Bearing this in mind, we discovered another trait. The successful people who repeatedly asserts proactive action to pursuing dreams tried when they were youngsters. If they are aged when they succeeded, they affirm that what matters is your heart and proactiveness to pursue. Truly, they tried at youth.
The Picture
So, the visualization comes like this : You are standing on one side of a mountain that is moving away from the other side constantly ( the opportunities ), and thus the gaps increases in its width. And as you grow, your back weighs more and more with things you might not want to discard ( responsibilities, but it is your family, and others. ), which means you will jump a shorter range. Now, the problem is : are you going to jump? If you jump, it does not guarantee a better future, but if you are aware that your location is doomed, it is a chance to roll the dice again. If you do not jump, you might stagnate here and live forever in the current side. It does not mean it must be bad, as you may find a shortcut to the other side ( A lot of people saves money and then quits, and goes to do their own hobbies. ) If you fall into the gap, chances are that you might die ( in heart ), and most likely you need to climb up that mountain with all your weight again. Think it is a bad of snakes. Sheesh, creeping.
Yet, as we depart the age of naivete realizing that real life testifies to us all the time that dreams must not necessarily be achieved in our twenties as highlighted by the various newspaper of the successful young entrepreneurs of this century, and even not necessarily in your whole life. But, go around, look around, and see all those mid forties fifties and sixties wandering around the streets and landmarks, and doing all sorts of crazy things like windgliding and parachuting and others, building houses for themselves and flying private jets. The list goes on and on. But, do not forget the people who did not proactively pursue their dreams at a young age, and then did not manage to fulfill them at an older age. These are people who started late ( for whatever reasons ), and failed, and has lower chances to recuperate for another attempt. You can find a lot of them around you, take your time. I have heard too many moanings that I learnt to skip these people.
The Speeches
Back to our “Steve”s and many other entrepreneurs, including the failed ones, a lot of them do not enjoy a Youtube ending. Even at a scale of a person, very few people can represent their country in Olympics or become a celebrity, despite the many athletes and good-looking models are trying. From this, we see that there are a lot of people who probably tried more than once here, especially when the winner slots are severely limited. These people who tried believed in their dreams, which generates motivation. The irony is you cannot easily pass that motivation and thrill onto others. But that witnessing someone prospering strongly induces what was motivation in the others “to want a piece of it” – you witnessed a future that is possible, and there goes your motivation again.
Think again, back to our early ages of the 16s and 18s, those were the times when failure is not a common term among us. And then motivation and courage arise just as natural like sex desires, but then we become more bit of the impotent later on as we age, but not immediately. What we need is viagra to our motivation that drives us to try. Yes, that is why you do not want to be pessimistic, to a state of being sadistic. These speeches were designed to “remind you” of your adventurous mindset, and not to enlighten you with new ideas.
Now it is plain obvious that these pursuing dreams articles are encouraging and enlightening at first sight, but is very much “asserting rubbish” to an average reader who listens again and again – which is just pure “boredom” and speeches of those winners describing themselves with hindsight bias. In some sense, it is true that hindsight bias is present, and many people do not attribute to luck for their successes, because dignity and the externities will not accept such ironic explanations. Hence, there are also truths that cannot be told, regardless of its tautological nature. If it is told, the effect goes away as well. What is less than obvious in these redundant speeches is that its true motive acts as a reminder – do it now before you cannot afford to fail.
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