There have been a couple of recent posts over at Wisebread.com about following your dreams, in response to which quite a few people claimed it was impossible. Considering that I’m currently taking quite a big risk to follow my dreams, I find this topic really interesting.
These are the steps that I took to follow my dream, although I didn’t so much “take” the first few steps as get a sudden push!
- Realization
One fine day I realized it’s possible to follow my dreams.
This was a shock to me, since I’d become jaded over time, and had started to think that I would be going down a “traditional” life – trying the corporate world, possibly not being that successful since I wasn’t about to work 15hour days in Corporateland, and having a “typical” life.
Then one day I understood that I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to. I live a very frugal life, so I don’t have to earn very much. Even a part-time role would pay enough to cover my bills, and I could spend the rest of my time chasing whatever dream I had. Whatever dream I had. - Acceptance
The next stage for me was accepting that I wasn’t really on track to the most fantastic life ever. Seeing a future in Corporateland didn’t excite me. Suddenly it was clear to me that my life wasn’t the awe-inspiring journey that it could be, and I should possibly think about changing its course. - Understanding
Once I realized that I wanted to do something different, I had to understand what I wanted to do. Why did I want out of the suburban dream? What did my dream life look like? It wasn’t just the things I would ideally have, or how much money I would make, but what kind of things did I love to do? - Dreaming big
When I was younger I had wanted to be a novelist. I also wanted to be an entrepreneur.I started dreaming wild dreams about what my ideal daily work would be like. From this, I started to narrow things down. What business did I want to be in? Did I still want to be a novelist or did I just want to write? What kind of things did I want to write? Did I have any other dreams? For instance, I’m very interested in business and marketing – did I maybe want to be a consultant, or write about business? I like design, so did I want some kind of design career, may as an interior designer? Or did I want to write about interior design? As you can see, there were so many possible combinations! At this stage I felt overwhelmed! I hadn’t done this kind of exercise since I was a child, and I suddenly realized that there was a whole world out there that I could possibly explore!
Around about this point I decided to take a step back and be a bit more realisitic. Following your dreams is a bit like trying to have a relationship – you may like some potential career, but it may not like you. It may like people with a skill set completely different to yours.
So I started trying to find “the one”. Again, like dating, there is no Mr Perfect – because there’s no-one out there who’s perfect. But there is a Mr Right, because there are people out there who are right for you. For possible careers that really appealed to me, I drew up lists of pros and cons.
Just because a career is a dream for you, doesn’t mean that it’s without it’s drawbacks. Once more, I can’t leave the analogy of a partner – just because you love someone it doesn’t mean they don’t have their flaws. At this stage, I was taking a long hard look at the cons, and trying to decide which ones I could live with. Essentially, I was doing a cost-benefit analysis of different career options, and trying to weigh how much I would get out of a career and how much I would have to put in, and what different things meant to me. For instance, I chose blogging about personal development, money and happiness because although the hours are quite a lot and the pay is much lower than what I could make in other careers, the potential satisfaction of a job well done is much higher. - Be determined
I’m putting this in as an extra step, because I needed to take a deep breath and decide that I would take the plunge. In fact, I’ve needed to take a couple of such deep breaths every few days, whenever I come across a little voice that says I’m doing something crazy and I’ll fail miserably and become an icon of stupidity. You need to have the determination to face down that little potent voice. - Put in the effort
This where most people fail.
It’s simply not practical to chase a dream when your life is already full with a career, a relationship, friends, family and maybe some other hobbies. Changing or starting a new career takes a whole lot of effort. How can you carve out time for that effort? Would you be able to maybe reduce your work hours and withstand a temporary cut in pay, would your partner/family support your dream? This stage actually takes a lot of preparation, trying to figure out how to put in that effort, and making a realistic assessment of how much you need to put in. It’s all right to say that you just don’t have the time for this: if you realize it upfront, you’ll have saved yourself a lot of wasted effort, and can maybe look into some other way to integrate your dream into your life.If you’ve got your plans set up already (e.g. become an interior designer by enrolling in a part-time course and helping out a designer for free on the weekends), are you really going to be able to put in the required effort?
If the answer to all those questions is yes, the only thing to do now is go ahead and stick it out. - Monetize
This is the very last step, and it only comes about if you’ve taken all the other steps. It may be a long and winding road to get there, but it ultimately happens. Of course, even after monetizing, you may not be able to make too much money. For instance, with this blog, I don’t have grandiose money-generating schemes, but if I make enough to cover my bills, the satisfaction of creating a good blog will be enough.
Quite a few things become apparant to me when I look back over this exercise.
Firstly, this exercise in following your dreams is only worth doing if you’re not satisfied with how your life’s going at the moment. If you’re already living the dream, congratulations!
If you think your life could do with a bit of a shakeup, it’s worth noting that most people have quite a few things that they love doing. For instance, you may love yoga, knitting and reading. So right there, you have a couple of potential career avenues. Some people say that they don’t know what their passion is, but I think very few people have one single passion. Some people have become so busy and immersed with their current life that they can’t remember anything that they really love doing.
There are a number of steps that you can take to uncover things that you love (hopefully I’ll have a blog post coming out on this shortly). But usually, it’s a number of different things. In fact, your dream may seem completely boring to someone else – for instance, I love marketing and business strategy and was seriously considering becoming a small-business consultant.
Another question that pops up is, what does it mean to follow your dream? It may be more suitable for some people to have a corporate job and a hobby. Just because you love doing something doesn’t mean that you should try to make it your career. I love yoga, but I could never make it my career – I would rather practice it than teach it, and I don’t see myself putting in eight hours a day of effort into it.
If you choose to try to make money from something you love, there are a number of ways you could go about it. You could teach it, you could practice it, you could sell products about it. Another example to clarify this: I love interior design. So I could try to set a blog with home design tips, or I could set up a magazine about interior design, showcasing recent works. I could try to be a designer myself. Or I could set up a shop selling home design items.
Maybe you love golf. You could try to be a pro golfer, you could try being a golf coach at a country club, you write an educational newsletter or book about golf, you could sell golf supplies, or you could cover golf tournaments and blog about golf gossip.
As I mentioned in my previous post, you may find out that you can’t really create a career around one particular thing you love. It may just not be practical enough: the cons would outweigh any benefits. For instance, you may like airplanes, but it may not be practical for you to want to be a pilot because firstly, flying lessons are expensive, and secondly, being a pilot means a lot of travel and you don’t want to spend lots of time away from your young family.
A lot of people don’t initially make their dream their full-time career. It’s most likely to take a while to make money from a career move: there may be some time required for education, looking for work, or setting up a business. This is where the concept of a “day job” comes in. Basically, a day job is a stress-free job that pays the bills, that you can fit your other “dream” career around. Often, this is a bit of a dead end job. This is the route I’ve taken. Having worked in call centres for a bit, I’ve seen quite a few hopeful actors, models and musicians choose this path as well. After all, it’s nice to not have to worry about bills, but a “proper” job is often too draining to do anything else afterwards. Another option to make your dream a reality is to work hard at a stressful job, save up, and “retire” early to pursue your ideal career.
Whichever option you choose, and however you choose to go about it, I believe that it is possible to work at something you love. At least, I hope I don’t fall flat on my face and prove myself wrong.
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