Dreams

All of us have dreams.

All of us do not dream.

Can you make out the difference between both the statements? Whilst the former is a dream which most of us have while sleeping and forget on waking, the latter is the vision we set for ourselves for the future.

There are various reasons why many of us do not dream

• prefer to take life as it comes or
• are comfortable with the existing situation or
• are bogged down by family pressure and responsibilities or
• complacent or
• under-confidence of one’s abilities or
• scared, lest the dream fail or
• scared, because people might laugh at or make fun of the dream or
• ignorance of the power to dream

Am a true believer that each one of us has loads of talent to make it BIG in the world. It’s just that the task of identifying the talent is not straight forward. It requires lots of contemplation, self appraisal, analysis of our passions & desires. Lot of us think that the people who make it big are born with the silver spoon in their mouth. While luck does have it’s own role in each of our lives, fortune favors the brave. If we look at history, the biggest names (right from Bill Gates to Warren Buffet to Dirubhai Ambani) started from scratch and carved out their empires. Agreed that few people have “it” in them, but a majority of them grow big because they never stop learning. They learn from the people around them (small or big does not matter), reading about the stories of successful people,  fictional books which inspire. The process of learning never really stops. Each of us as an individual can do anything we want. We just have to set our heart and mind towards it.

Human brain is a person’s biggest asset. It can give answers, solve equations, create visions and do just about everything as long as we do not limit ourselves. We do not even harness a fraction of it’s original power to think and do. In our normal day to day scenarios, we tend to think only in the direction which is set. If there were a business problem with some department in our company, we do not think a solution for that if we are not responsible.  This is how we limit ourselves. If one needs to understand the power of our brain, try to wake up in the morning remembering your dreams (the former kind mentioned above). When we are in deep sleep, our brain is free of any limitations. It does many things which we would not have thought capable of. For eg, I try do the above exercise very often and have been very surprised, i’ve woken up in the morning realizing having sung a song with lyrics never heard before, having choreographed steps which have never seen before (though I am born of two left feet), solving a technical problem which has been bothering me in real life for many days. When we have this realization of the power within us, we can do anything. There are no limitations, no precedents. Ask an average adult to give a speech in front of 100 people, he will shiver, he will blunder. Put a 2 year old kid in front of 100 people and ask him to speak about his toys, he will blabber non-stop with high excitement. What’s the difference between both, the adult has heard of something called “stage-fear” whereas the child has not yet come across that concept. Our limitations are what we impose upon ourselves. Free ourselves and we live a free life. This is very very easy to say and equally tough to enact, but having the realization is the first step forward.

Three books have changed my life forever: The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Godfather. I learnt how to dream, why to dream. I found my passion, found out where I want to be. Though I have not yet figured our how to reach there, I know I will. Knowing where to go is the most important step. We get a direction, a mission for our life, getting there is something which will eventually happen once we are convinced of where we want to go.

“The first ingredient of success is desire.
Do you know what you want?
Your desire is the planting of your seed.
Your desire for success must be so strong within you
that it's the very breath of your life.
It must be your first thought when you wake in the morning,
and your last thought when you go to bed at night.”

So, if you like writing, dream that you would write a best seller one day selling over a million copies, if you adore cars, dream that you will bring a revolution to the way cars run, if you like playing guitar, dream that you will perform solo to a live audience in a packed stadium, if you think your world is made of 0 & 1’s, dream that you will build a computer which will replace books in each and every school in the world.

Dare to DREAM and dream BIG.