Big dreams don’t seem so big when you stop chasing the future and fall in love with the process instead.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Have you ever wondered where those big dreams come from? And when I say big dreams, what I’m talking about is that version of reality that seems so good that it almost hurts to think about. You know what I’m talking about?
That future you, that life that you wish you could live. Maybe it’s not your whole life, maybe it’s just something that you’ve seen someone else experience that you also want to experience. When I was first starting out in my martial arts career, I opened a martial arts school, and I was very happy, I loved teaching, I loved working with my students, I loved training, I loved everything about it. But then, I started meeting other people who also had martial arts school, who were doing way better than I was.
And I’m not talking about just financially, the level of impact, I mean, their level of influence with their students, and how good their students were. And I would go and see them teach and train, and I would come back to my school and kinda feel deflated. I would feel just completely depressed because I saw other people getting such good results, results that seemed so much bigger than I was getting.
And I’ll tell you, it really took the wind out of my sails. Because it seemed like such a big jump to get there, and the more that I compared myself to where they were, the more down I got. And I don’t mind sharing with you that I backed away from those dreams a lot of times because those dreams were so big that I was afraid I’d never reach them. And I even started to resent those people a little bit, as weird as that sounds, I would see people having more success, more influence, more impact, having more freedom, having more fun, and it would just be painful.
But then I began to realize that comparing where I was now, to where they are, just wasn’t that useful, and I began to just play with the idea of What if… What if I had just a few more students in my school? What if I was a little better teacher? What if I was able to have a greater impact? And instead of forcing myself to reach that some day thing, I started to appreciate where I was right now, and I started to look for those qualities in my day. And guess what?
As I started to look for those qualities, they started to multiply. I started to feel more confident, I started to feel more certain. And then little by little, those big dreams didn’t seem so big any more, as I started to measure and track my own daily successes, as I started to give myself a little more credit for the wins that I was having.
The pain of not being, and that some day picture, well that pain sort of went away. And then my belief began to develop. I started to feel the coming of that dream, I started to realize that, hey, y’know what, from where I was to where I am is actually pretty good, so if I keep doing what I’m doing, keep learning the way that I’m learning, keep training the way that
I’m training, keep studying the way that I’m studying, how can I do anything other than succeed with this big dream? And that’s when everything changed. When I fell in love with the process, and stopped rushing to get to some place else. That’s when everything really shifted. And that’s the path that I’ve been on ever since.
Having a vision, having a dream in mind, but letting go of the need to get there right now, and instead just sort of operating from this place of active appreciation. And when I would see somebody succeeding, I would just kind of appreciate that person.
And yeah, I would seek out coaches, and mentors, and I would do whatever it took to be around somebody who is getting the results that I wanted to get. And I believe that’s something that’s available to all of us, and it’s available to you. If there’s a dream that you have, no matter how big, or how crazy, or how amazing that dream is, no matter how impossible it might seem at the time, those dreams exist for a reason.
Those dreams exist as a way of fueling your present moment. And there’s just no dream that’s too big. If you’re willing to appreciate the process, if you’re willing to allow yourself to give yourself some credit for how far you’ve already come, and invest some time and energy every day, and giving that dream a little bit of love, give that dream a little more attention. And I promise you, you’ll see.