A dream you don’t have to fight for isn’t a dream—it’s a nap. One changes your afternoon. The other changes your world. Keep fighting.
You’re too busy to pursue your dream right now. That’s one of the ideas I write about in my new book, Quitter, Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job and your Dream Job. Whether it’s a book or a blog or a mission trip or a new job, life is too full to really work on your “thing.”
You’ve got a lot going on. I do too. And sometimes, when we focus on our dreams, or try to brainstorm ideas, our wives cry in the kitchen. That’s been my experience anyway.
What’s the biggest thing every blogger on the planet struggles with? What’s the one thing that kills more blogs than any other and how do we all make sure our blogs don’t fall victim to it. In this 3:44 video that’s exactly what I talk about. Check out the video after the jump:
Sometimes, it’s easy to think that nobody would care about your particular dream. You’ve got an idea that matters a lot to you, but you can’t imagine it would be something you could build a tribe or a movement or a community around. It’s too weird or too niche or too something. But recently while I was walking in the parking lot of the mall, a bumper sticker reminded me that’s not true.
The reality is that every dream has a community.
Here’s the sticker in question:
The other day I told my wife, “My new book is the best thing I’ve ever written.” I told her this for two reasons:
1. I believe it is.
2. If you say stuff like this to anyone but your wife you look cocky and dumb.
I wasn’t going to say that on a blog until her response knocked me over. Here is what she said:
A few days ago a 73-year-old man told me he was a little envious of my age. He wanted to write books. He wanted to speak at conferences. And knowing I was 35 years old and doing both those things already was a little frustrating to him.
I had to laugh.
Why?
When I help small businesses and individuals with social media, one of the first things they tell me is, “Our web traffic is horrible.”
And sometimes it is. Sometimes, something is broken and needs to be fixed. But more often than not, they’re just looking at the wrong number.
The problem is that we hear big web numbers like “Facebook has 300 million users,” and then we get depressed or overwhelmed at how small the traffic to our thing is. “I’m only having a 1,000 people visit my HVAC company website every month.” Or “I’ve only had 50 people on my personal blog this month. There are hundreds of millions of people online and I’ve got 50 visiting me each month.”
We are all afraid of being sell outs.
“Sell out” is one of those labels anyone who ever attempts to do anything creative is afraid of. At least a little bit. (You may be inherently more confident than I am and immune to this fear.)
It’s a barb people will throw at you sometimes when whatever it is you’re doing grows a little bit. And when you hear this label the natural reaction is to think inside, “Have I done something wrong? Am I being untrue to the thing I’ve always wanted to do?”
Those aren’t bad questions to ask, but I think there’s a better one to ask first:
The microwave at the house we’re staying at doesn’t have any number buttons. If you want to punch the 1 and the 4 and the 5 to enter in a time of 1:45 you can’t, because those numbers don’t exist.
Next to a start button, numbers are probably the most important thing to me on a microwave. Instead of having them though we have a big dial. To set a precise time you have to spin it like a contestant on the Price Is Right. I’ll admit, that is different than any other microwave I’ve owned, but is different always better?
Everyone says “There are no bad ideas when you are brainstorming.”
No one believes it though.
We say that ground rule at the beginning of brainstorming meetings in the hope that it will creatively release everyone from the prison of trying to impress the most important person in the room.
That’s what we fear. We will look dumb. We will say an idea that is foolish or impossible or has already done by a million other people.
So we say, “There are no bad ideas,” but we do not believe it. We hold back our ideas and end up creating really safe, ordinary ideas even as we try to do something extraordinary.
For the last few years, that’s been a question I’ve wrestled with. When someone said something rude or mean that comment became like a lighthouse for me. I’d regularly reply to comments that attacked me and ignore a lot of kind, very interesting conversations with other people.
Until my wife punched me in the stomach with a prediction of what was going to happen if I kept going down that path. Here’s what she said: