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I think I finally understand this quote by Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate – our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

When I discovered my guest post on Mike King’s blog, Learnthis.ca, received over 1,000 hits on StumbleUpon on the day of its publication, I was ecstatic. I felt the usual celebratory emotions that come with reaching any milestone: happiness, excitement, and surprise, to name a few.

But what I couldn’t quite understand was this other emotion I could feel coming from within me. It was like there was a fear inside me.

It seemed to say, “Was this power really inside me all this time?”

The short answer: yes

We all have the power to make our dreams real. And I mean ANY dreams real. Think about it. If you truly believe you will fail, then you have no doubt that you will. Every day of your life will be spent succumbing to the detrimental idea of reality you have created for yourself.

Soon, every instance of temporary failure you encounter will only solidify the dream you’ve made in your mind and will eventually come through in your actions.

Now, think about when you truly believe you will succeed. Remember that similarly, if you believe it, you will be more likely to follow the actions leading to your inevitable success, thus resulting in making your success real.

Change the way you perceive reality

Your reality is not set in stone. Although everyone will try and tell you how life will end up for you if you pursue your own dreams, you can rest assured that they are not 100% sure themselves.

They cannot tell you how your reality will end up because all they really know is their own reality.

When you confront other people’s “regular reality” with your idea of a remarkable one, they will criticize it because they do not understand it. People, in general, are naturally following skeptics. In other words, they are skeptical of what other people think is skeptical, rarely drawing from their own observations.

You can end this right now

Are you ready to bring about your own reality? For those of you who wish to continue on the conventional path, thank you. You are the ones that challenge the rest of us to make our dreams real.

And with these tips, you most certainly will:

Speak of your goals only once

This is a bit of an odd technique to start with, but trust me, it works. I got this idea from Derek Sivers, who says that announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them. That’s why we constantly hear of people who talk constantly of change and achieving their dreams, but ultimately fail at actually carry them out.

I suggest speaking of your intentions only once, just so people around you know your intentions, and then stop talking about them completely. Believe it or not, keeping your mouth shut will increase the actions you take towards your goals.

Instead of telling them, SHOW them.

Do not be afraid of your willpower

Our willpower is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Our will is what made man go to the moon. Will is what’s going to create the cure for cancer. Will is what made everything we have at our fingertips possible.

Humankind as a whole isn’t afraid of their willpower: don’t be afraid of yours. Realize that the power to get what you want is entirely within your control. You and you alone, are the master of your domain.

Realize that only willpower is not enough

Think of the way we use power in life. Electricity is utterly useless to us when if we let it remain in the atmosphere, but if we harness it, many things become possible. All we have to do is use electricity to power a microwave and we can reheat into our food.

This is the same way you should be thinking about willpower. Will unharnessed is energy put to waste. Use this fuel to power your actions and mover ever closer to the actualization of your dreams.

Do not stop short of the finish line

A common problem we have is stopping short right before we actually get to the end. This tends to happen when we become too frustrated to keep going, giving up before we’ve reached our true potential. I know that you sometimes feel that you’re trying crack a rock with a slipper when pursuing your dreams, but you have to understand something:

Everything worth anything takes effort. And this effort must be present all the way until the end.

With willpower, the wind is at your back

The potential that lies inside each of us is more powerful than many of us will ever know. Most of the world will still stand together as skeptics, forever questioning their will.

But in the end, the few who question their very skepticism are the ones who will be able to decide their own destiny.

http://www.dragosroua.com/how-to-reach-your-dreams-through-willpower/

Number of gun owners in the U.S.: 80,000,000

Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups): 1,500

Accidental deaths per gun owner: 0.0000188

Number of physicians in the U.S.: 700,000

Number of accidental deaths caused by physicians per year (all age groups): 120,000

Accidental deaths per physician: 0.171 (U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services)

Statistically, Doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

FACT: Not everyone has a gun, but everyone has at least one doctor. Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets out of hand. (As a public health measure, statistics on lawyers were withheld for fear that the shock could cause people to seek medical aid.)

12 years ago I set out on my first foray into the world of entrepreneurship. The company was called MCSETutor.com (we later changed the name to the equally obtuse 2000Tutor.com) and while it wasn’t a huge success by dot com era standards we did sell it for a tidy profit. But looking back I’m shocked at how little I knew about entrepreneurship.

As I’m sure any entrepreneur would love to do, I’d give anything to step back in time 12 years and have a chat with my 21 year old self. And while I can’t do that I do love to share lessons with as many young entrepreneurs as I can. I’ve spoken a bunch at colleges and other organizations for young entrepreneurs. I love passing along lessons while realizing that my experience is far from complete and I have many lessons yet to learn. Still, here are 5 things I’d tell myself if I could step back to 1997 and take myself out for coffee (yes, I know that sounds strange…)

#1 – Take as much risk as you can as early in life as you can. My choice at the time was to either be an investment banker or start a company with some friends. Starting a company sounded way riskier. Which is the main reason why I think I took it. Yogi Berra may have said when you come to a fork in the road take it but I’d merely add when you come to a fork in the road take the riskier path.

I’m not talking stupid risks. But smart, calculated ones. Look, at some point in your life you’ll have kids and a mortgage and a spouse who might not be super understanding of your crazy business ideas. But when you’re young you usually don’t have any of those things. Which means you can swing for the fences. Please do so. I promise you won’t regret it.

#2 – Nail the fundamentals. There are things that you know you’ll likely be doing for the rest of your life. Reading, speaking, typing, etc. Get really good at those things when you are young. When you’re young you typically have a lot more time on your hands. My gosh, I think about all the thousands of hours I wasted when I was at college…

Take some of that time and use it to build skills that will make you more effective and productive the rest of your life. Learn to type faster (David Allen impressed upon me that this will save you thousands of hours during your lifetime). Practice various speed reading techniques (I’ll blog on that soon). Hone your speaking skills by doing something like Toastmasters. Later in life when you’re a busy executive and balancing running a company and raising a family you’ll have a lot less time to devote to this stuff. So nail these things when you’re young and you’ll benefit for your entire lifetime.

#3 – Surround yourself with people who expect you to succeed in a big way. Two quotes have had a tremendous influence on me in this area of my life:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” -Jim Rohn

“The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the expectations of your peer group” -Tony Robbins

Simply put, if you want to succeed surround yourself with people who (a) are succeeding and (b) expect you to do likewise. That simple piece of advice will do more to put you on the path to success than anything else I can think of.

I’m lucky. I gained this awareness around the age of 27 or so. Some people don’t gain it until much later in life. Some people never do. If you can realize that at 21 you’ll be way, way ahead of the game. I think whether this means peers, mentors, etc. is less important. What’s most important is that the people you are around expect you to do big things with your life. That will serve like a tractor beam that literally pulls you towards some major accomplishments.

#4 – Follow your bliss. This phrase originates (I believe) with Joseph Campbell. It basically means do something your passionate about. OK, you’ve heard that advice a million times. But I think the turning point for me was when I was reading Keith Ferrazzi’s excellent book Never Eat Alone. In it, he talks about the concept of the “blue flame” which he defines as “a convergence of mission and passion founded on a realistic self-assessment of your abilities.” Then he goes on to describe Joseph Campbell’s blue flame.

After graduation, (Campbell) moved into a cabin in Woodstock, New York, where he did nothing but read from nine in the morning until six or seven each night for five years.

I’m not suggesting that you hole up in a cabin and read for five years but what I will suggest is that you should be able to, in the words of Steve Jobs, wake up and say to yourself if I was going to do what I’m about to do today for the rest of my life I would be insanely happy. Or, to put it in Campbell’s words:

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

#5 – Give the big middle finger to the “good or bad opinion of others“. When you’re 21 people are going to tell you you should “build your resume”, “get a full year of experience with a big company” or (my personal favorite) “be a doctor or a lawyer” (apologies to all my doctor and lawyer friends…God bless you and the world most definitely needs you!). These people (often your family and closest friends) have good intentions. They want what they think is best for you. But while their advice often comes from a pure place it also is very often misguided.

The people who truly change the world often don’t care too much what people think of them. They may have an inner circle who they go to for advice but they are not about to let the opinions of most people sway them from their mission. This removal of the baggage that comes along with trying to win the approval of others frees up a tremendous amount of time and energy to focus in the direction of being who you truly are, not who someone else wants you to be. Because let’s face it, if you’re going into law/medicine/big corporate life/etc because you feel someone else wants you to do that, you’re not going to be happy. Nope, that’s not true. You’re going to be totally miserable. Across the board. No exceptions.

I was way too self-conscious at 21. Heck, I’m still way too self-conscious at 33. But I think the difference is that the older I get the more aware of that I am and the easier it is for me to let little bits of that go. Get started early on that in life and you won’t regret it. Plus, it makes life a whole heckuva lot more fun. By the way, if you want a cool exercise (one that I admittedly have yet to do) to help eradicate your self-consciousness try this one out from Tim Ferriss:

…simply lie down in the middle of a crowded public place. Lunchtime is ideal. It can be a well-trafficked sidewalk, the middle of a popular Starbucks, or a popular bar. There is no real technique involved. Just lie down and remain silent on the ground for about ten seconds, and then get up and continue on with whatever you were doing before.

Fantastic.

I hope you all enjoyed this and I would love (love!) to hear what you would tell your 21, 31, 41, whatever year old self. Fire away in the comments!!

jonbischke.com/2009/04/24/the-5-things-id-tell-my-21-year-old-entrepreneurial-self/