Running the gauntlet of dream stealers

“Life’s full of dream stealers always telling you, you need to do something more sensible. I think it doesn’t matter what your dream is, just fight the dream stealers and hold on to it.” Bear Grylls

As you start Creating A New, Beautiful And Courageous Existence you are going to run the gauntlet of dream stealers. These dream stealers can be lurking anywhere.

The resistance you experience could come from surprising sources. You might expect it from people that you don’t know very well. However, you may experience resistance from amongst the people who should be supporting you the most too.

Yet, dream stealers don’t have to be other people. There are internal dream stealers too. Let’s have a look at the two different categories of dream stealers.

External dream stealers

• Your family
• Family or acquaintances
• Your “superiors”
• Past failures

Why do people behave in this way?

Dream stealers have got use to things the way they are. They may enjoy the superiority they feel because they consider their situation to be better than yours. Fear could also play a factor here. As you start to move forward how will it impact on your relationship with them? Will you still drop everything when they phone with the latest emergency? How they get validation as a “good person” if you no longer rely on them so much? What will happen if you start challenging their influence over your life?

Can you see a theme here?

Everything is about THEM and not about you.

They don’t really care about how you feel. The only thing that is important is the impact that your actions have on THEM.

They want to retain a status quo where they are the priority. You’re needs, and desires, are not important.

Internal Dream Stealers

• Negativity
• Self-doubt
• Fear
• Procrastination
• Exhaustion

Is there a theme here too? I think there is.

Our internal dream stealers thrive when we suffer from low self-esteem. When we struggle with who we are, negativity creeps in and we doubt our ability to make sensible decisions. Then we procrastinate about making changes because we fear the results and don’t trust our ability to succeed.

As for exhaustion: when you’ve been overwhelmed by your situation and emotions for so long it’s little wonder that you feel exhausted. You feel tired of being unhappy, tired of not making progress, tired of the rest of the world getting on with their lives, and tired of putting a brave face on every time you open the front door.

The Procrastinating Poet

Procrastination has been a huge challenge for me in the past. So much so that I wrote a poem about being a procrastinating poet, when, guess what, I should have been filing my tax return. You can read the poem here.

If procrastination is a challenge for you then the 2-minute rule explained in this article might help.

I will be sharing ideas on how to deal with dreams stealers next Saturday. I will add a link here once it is published. You might also be interested in Andrew’s blog tomorrow when he’s looking at the pros and cons of “grinning and bearing it”.

Practice makes perfect

It’s all well and good writing about things in theory: however, we need to start applying what we learn. Today I’d like you to make a promise that you will deal with the dream stealers that you have in your life. We’ll start slowly by making a list of the people and groups who you feel are not as supportive as they should be. Remember these can be people that you know face-to-face or people you have only connected with on-line. When you start thinking about the groups don’t forget the on-line groups either. We’re going to let the thoughts “settle” before we take the next step and plan how to deal with specific situations.

To help you keep track of all your work for the daily activities mentioned we have created a monthly diary for you to record your progress. To download your copy of “My January Canbace Diary” please click here.

Be kind to yourself …

In CANBACE friendship!

If anything I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about. If you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website, please let me know. I will keep your words private.