Why Dreaming Big Is Not Always Good
I have an
important question for you, and I bet you have dedicated your fair share of
thought to it throughout the course of your lives – which way of thinking is
better, dreaming big or being satisfied with small things? Since I held the
first belief my whole life, I believe I am qualified enough to talk about why
it can be even more harmful than being unambitious.
My whole life
I thought I was gonna be huge. Not just your typical A-student type huge, but
world-famous huge. I probably had some predisposition to think so, because I
was a fairly talented kid and did really well at school, constantly scoring at
the top of the class.
Over time,
however, my motivation turned into something unhealthy. I started to believe
that I was entitled to success, and I grew more and more frustrated as I faced
the real world. Well, the truth is I didn’t face it a lot until going to collage
and leaving my hometown, where I had lived in a safe bubble believing that
success in the big city is waiting for me to come.
The first
ominous sign came when I didn’t get a perfect score at the entrance exams. I
still scored really well – 75% out of 100%, and got into the collage, but I
wasn’t the first one anymore. Which seems pretty logical now – there were
thousands and thousands of kids applying to the same college – but back then I
felt that I was missing something. I couldn’t enjoy my triumph because I didn’t
get that perfect score.
The pitfall,
however, came almost one year later when I first got pointer 3.2 on a
semi-conductor device exam, a subject I absolutely hated. Then I started to
feel like a failure. Now you are probably wondering, “What does it have to do
with dreaming big?” Here’s my answer: I always dreamed big, and this made me
overlook tiny successes and feel entitled for admiration and victory.
I believe you
can guess what happened next. I grew more and more frustrated, as I realized
you had to work, and most often, work hard, to achieve what you wanted. You
even had to withstand failure and rejection – something I wasn’t used to
dealing with at all. The only opinion I had about failures is that they
diminished my previous accomplishments and my value as a person, and that
successful people never fail and never have to deal with the pain of rejection.
Dreaming big
is good, as it helps a person set far-reaching goals and do bold things. But it
can only work if a person has healthy relationships with failure, tryouts and
taking tiny steps. The success that seemingly comes overnight takes years to
achieve, but no one wants to mention those years – they are a boring time of exhausting,
plain and continuous hard work. Sounds bad enough for a movie, right?
Don’t teach
anyone just to dream big – teach them to dream big while taking small steps.
This is always better than staying in one place and wishing to be teleported to
the valley of success.
"HAPPY ENDINGS COME AFTER A STORY WITH A LOTS OF UPS AND DOWNS."
