Beware of Dream-Stealers…

“The minute you let go of the need to please everybody you will start to see your own worth and appreciate your own magnificence.” ~ Gold in the Cracks

We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood. Along the way we sometimes find that life has altered our plans. Often when that happens, we reason that this deviation from our dream, and our plan for our life, was our fate.

What we don’t realize is that we may have allowed others’ perception or perspective stop us from following our dream and living our potential.

How many times have you stopped yourself from doing something because you’re concerned about how people will react?

How many times have you allowed someone else’s opinion or criticism stop you from doing what you believe in?

How many times have you apologized for your success?

I know I have. Too many times to count…

I also know many people, near and dear to me, who have allowed their dreams to be aborted even before they saw the light of day.

Along the way of having given up so many of my own dreams, and encountered many who have been in a similar position, I have learned a very valuable lesson:

People tend to put you in a box that is neatly and tightly wrapped, never to be opened again. They have formed their opinion of who you are or who you should be, from years past, mostly based on their own opinion of themselves, their society, and the world around them. Regardless of your true persona or how you may have evolved over the years, in their eyes you are still the person they have condemned you to be.

It doesn’t matter what you do, it only matters what they think you have done.

I have learned that people love to blame others for their own shortcomings, that what the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, ‘It’s all your fault!’

The crazy thing is that if we live by other people’s opinion, nothing we do will ever be right, nothing will ever satisfy them; we’ll never reach our true potential, never fulfill our dreams.

The crazier thing is that when we believe these naysayers and internalize their opinion of us, we start…