We All Need To Stop Letting Our Insecurities Dictate Our Dreams

There’s a lot of emphasis on living the dream in today’s world, and it has a much more varied meaning than it has had in the past. Compared to the 1950’s American Dream of buying a house in the suburbs, nowadays our dreams are pretty much limitless.

Thanks to Mr. Internet, our life ambitions are more accessible. We can start up a business in a day, create an online profile for our art, network with people we admire but would rarely get the chance to talk to in reality. The internet is filled with great opportunities and knowledge for anyone and everyone to fulfil their ambitions.

Though it is so within reach, it can feel so far away.

If you have got it all figured out with a five year plan, and you are not hazed in the slightest when your great aunt asks you what you’re going to do with your life, then that’s excellent. And you are a superior species, congratulations.

If you know what you’d like to be doing but no idea how to get there, your dreams can seem null and void when somebody asks you what your biggest goal is. Without said plan or at least some hints about how to create your dream life, it all seems impossible.

You feel too young anyway – there’s plenty of time for you to achieve everything you want when you’re older, when you feel more like a grown-up. Sure, you pretend to be an adult by going to work, doing your laundry and ordering a take-away whenever you can’t be bothered to cook and have found a £20 note you didn’t know you had – but mostly you still feel like the scared 17-year-old you, who can’t stand it when someone asks about your future and just wants to live the cool TV adult life of a sitcom.

The thing is, though you might feel like you’re not ready yet, you probably are.

Achieving your dream isn’t going to happen in a day (my impatience took several years to learn this), and it isn’t going to magically become a lot easier to accomplish when you are older. You’ve got to make a start, because if not now, when?

Imagining my future, more adult self, I see someone who has it all sorted, who has their shit together, and who has a gorgeous body, four hilarious children running around her and at least 6 pets. Nice. But I don’t doubt that my future self will still carry some of the same insecurities that I have now. She’ll maybe have the shadow of depression still haunting her every now and again. She’ll still feel like a 17-year-old but with more responsibility than ever before. She might feel like an imposter.

Truth is, she might not feel ready to achieve her dreams either. She’ll have her insecurities about starting her ultimate life too. Just like any person (yes, even Beyoncé) insecurities are part of life.

As insecurities are always going to be there, big or small, you may as well give them a piggy-back and start climbing to reach that ultimate dream life of yours. If you desire to achieve something great, for yourself or your community or the entire planet, then you must start believing more in your positive attributes rather than the negatives. Of course, it’s easier said than done – shutting down any voice of anxiety or pessimism within your own thoughts is a challenge in itself. But it is possible if you give your inner positive voices a megaphone and a table to stand on.

As the saying goes; “stars cannot shine without darkness.”