In plain English this basically means there is an eternal battle going on inside ourselves. You may deny it but deep down you know this is true). In one corner is the norms and values of our society and culture injected into our individual psyche through education, upbringing and interaction with our social peers. (Socialisation) At the other corner is your true self, your fantastic personality, your hidden talents and creative genius.  The real McCoy. (Individualisation)

Sadly Socialisation tends to win. Almost Every time. The way we see our life, our values and expectations are for the large part played out by how those values and expectations were handed down to us by society. So ingrained is this many of us refer to these as our goals and ‘dreams’.

Which (from around age 20) kinda means this, more or less:

Graduate from college, find a steady well-paying job, settle down, buy a house, get married, have kids and ultimately work crazy hours for over four decades to build a reasonable pension that will get you covered through the retirement age.

Nothing wrong with that.  But surely there’s more.

There is, but you have to take a break from the norm: Stay strong in the midst of nay sayers.

Put it another way:

If you’re a kid and declare you want to become an astronaut or a fire eater, your ambitions aren’t dissented or frowned upon (they’re encouraged) but if you’re 25 and announce you are quitting your job for a year’s trip around the world to collect inspiring stories for a book you want to write, you will probably be advised to think it over and get real.

Why should your dreams and ambitions stop once you reach the age of maturity? When you have an actual real chance of doing what you want!

What holds us from creating our dream life? Each one of us has his or her personal barriers to achieving one’s authentic goals and dreams but there are a set of commonly experienced barriers that are good to have on one’s check list.

• The ‘when I have more money’ mentality. We always tend to equate major life changes with changes in income and wealth. It’s like the only way we can follow our authentic dreams and leap out from the system is by a major financial boost. “When I have more money I will spend my time traveling and being inspired by art instead of being stuck in a cubicle”. However even though following your goals require financial support of varying degrees, the mistake is to assume that more money must flow in before even starting to embark on your real life journey or that financial boost is the end in itself.

• Getting the timing right. I was told this countless times. And I believed it for many years. The truth: There will never be a perfect time. Ever.  Life cannot be predicted.  I’m convinced many people have waited an entire lifetime waiting for the right time. This doesn’t mean that planning is not important. Just don’t put “wait for the right time” anywhere in the plan.

• Trading a fulfilled interesting life for comfort and security Fear of uncertainty, failure and being unaccepted by family and peers can push the average person to ditch their dreams. “I’m alright. I’m comfortable and safe. There’s plenty of time. Let’s worry about my dream life tomorrow”. When exactly is tomorrow?
• Not questioning common knowledge & folk wisdom. Others don’t know what’s best for you. You do. Common knowledge & folk wisdom is someone else’s ideas. Have your own mind, so use it.
• Living other people’s dreams. It’s your life. Your choice. You’re big and bad enough to make your own decisions yourself. Yeah you can even make your own mistakes. At least they’ll l be yours.
• Being reasonable all the time.  You’re too damn nice. Making compromises. Trying your best not to offend anyone.  You can’t leas everyone all of the time. Quit focusing on this and concentrate on yourself.

So those are the barriers. . Fight them. Overcome them.

But how do you approach things in view of achieving your authentic goals.  Here are a few actions you could take.

• Have confidence in your own views.  We may live our entire life in the comfortable illusion that things are as they are and cannot be lived or experienced differently. NO! Question things. Install a habit of not taking things for granted, of questioning established knowledge and knowing that there is always a different way of doing things. Always.
• Redefine values. You could work all the hours in the world. 24/7. And you could make £20,000 a month. You would be very wealth. But wouldn’t you be richer if you were earning £1,500 per month but working only 20 hours per week while doing trekking in South America. Or whatever your passion is. More time equals more self-worth because it allows us to be able to follow the things that really excite us and are in line with our life’s purpose.
• The art of doing less. Or working more cleverly. We are often preoccupies with thinking more is better.  We fill our leisure time with more projects. Wasting hours checking emails. Or writing notes to ourselves about more work. It’s not about being more productive but about doing less-meaningful work so as to free up time to do things that excites us more.
• Plotting the absurd in detail.  The idea here is to break things up into achievable steps.   All too often we can come with grandiose plans only to abandon them when the tasks as a whole seems impossible.  So: Start by writing down your wildest dreams without fear of being silly or unrealistic. Split them into ‘having’ (material and other acquisitions), ‘being’ (fluent in Japanese, a web guru, etc) and ‘doing’ (visiting South America, learning camel racing I Egypt, etc).

Convert the being and having into doing, that is, into action steps necessary for reaching your goal. Estimate how much it would cost you in monthly income to achieve these goals. This will put them in a more tangible and doable context. Keep on narrowing down your mega goals until they come down to achievable weekly or daily steps and budgets. This is how plans, no matter how big, are achieved.

• It’s all about excitement! Forget about the money, Forget about the status, achievement. Dong activities that excite you is where it’s at. Doing things that keep you motivated even to the point of losing sleep or skipping meals. Successful people are driven by the excitement of what they are doing. Whatever it is.
• Focus on strengths not on fixing weaknesses. Did you have a teacher saying oh this area need improving on? WRONG! Forget your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths. That’s what you’re good at and that’s probably what you enjoy as well. ‘We all have our strengths. What’s yours?
• Pessimistic optimism. What’s the worst that could happen? Really. If I follow my dreams what is the worst that could happen? Deal with these questions. The answers may be liberating. You may even realize you don’t need to wait to “lose” your job. GO FOR IT!

Following our authentic dreams and being aligned with our purpose is tantamount to a happy fulfilled life and it’s no wonder that many of us consider it as unachievable or extremely difficult. This is because our view of the world has been skewed and heavily influenced by how our culture and society perceives what is real and what is normal.

Work smarter, not harder, do the things that excite us most by doing less inconsequential work, focusing on our strengths and thinking big but planning our goals in small achievable steps and budgets.

FORGET THE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE WORLD AND LEAD THE LIFE YOU WANT ON YOUR OWN TERMS.