Re-Define The Dream

Dear lovely people,

When Sango got to me that morning, he bore all imprints of a confused man. He told me, two main things had been running through his mind for the last six months. He had worked for many years to build his dream clothing business but recently, he’s no longer passionate about the business, he feels tired and discouraged each time he has to do something for the business. That alone was playing negatively on his business. “My business is going down the drain, sales are no longer as before and there are really days I don’t feel like going to the shop” he painfully told me.

On the other hand, Sango thinks what he would have worked on from the very beginning is a car business. He felt deep within him that starting a car sales and rental business will but him back on rails and make him be at peace with himself once again. He told me he was passionate about every single thing related to cars and said that’s where his heart really is for the future.

I was immediately placed on a hot seat. While Sango sounded like his mind was made up, the question was should I just encourage him to switch off and onto a new unrelated business just because he was feeling bad about the first one? What if he realized he had been chasing the wrong dream and now needed a new one to move on with? I decided to facilitate his decision making process instead of just chewing out a solution for him. To do this, I requested Sango to honestly ask himself some hard questions. What does real success look like for you? What is it that truly makes you happy?

Maybe you want more time, not more money. Maybe you crave more freedom, not a more demanding business. I told him, when he becomes really clear about what is important to him in life, he will find the first clues about what his new dream will look like.

I had gone through the same cycle in the past. In my case just as it certainly is for any other case, it was incredibly important to let go of the old dream that didn’t serve me anymore. Feeling depressed, discouraged, demotivated, angry and bitter is far worse than feeling lost and empty for a while. Change is difficult, but enduring a period of pain is the path to turning things around. Sometimes the new dream and the new direction can be found in the most unexpected of places, but that’s what starting over is all about.

It took Sango a while to find his purpose again, but once he did, he felt like anything was possible again. Life changes, we change as people; it only makes sense that our dreams change too. When I met Sango a year later, I met a man with a new balance and a new direction especially as he started to diversify his ideas of success. Achieving the dream shouldn’t be about sacrifice and pain. Instead, it should be about daily joy.

What you do every day is what your life becomes about. The dream is just your idea of the future. Focusing on enjoying the everyday will lead you to that next purpose that is right for you.