Everyone wants to fulfill one’s dreams, however, not everyone is capable of it. It turns out that one of the most popular obstacles on our route to the life of our dreams is actually the fact we do not know what this dream life is. How can one have confidence in one’s own abilities and enough self-esteem to achieve goals if he or she is struggling with defining these goals in the first place since it is difficult for a person to understand oneself?
Here, you will find a couple of popular reason causing such troubles in our lives and the ways in which we can address them
A difficulty with finding a contact with oneself
One of the most frequent culprit of our inability to define dreams and goals is the fact we simply do not hear or, to be precise, cannot hear ourselves. Unfortunately, this is one of the most popular burdens of adults who experienced a childhood with rather authoritative parents or overprotective parents. Actually, such an experience can severely disturb the internal harmony in people during their adult life and sometimes cannot be overcome without professional help.
If you have parents who prefer to do everything for you on their own whether it is choosing afterschool activities or recommending you children for befriending without actually asking your opinion, it could cause two popular scenarios. In the first one, you might have gathered all of your rebellious spirit in order to get free or you might have lost your decisiveness and understanding of oneself. If the second scenario is about you, there is nothing strange in your current problems. In all likelihood, you have a trouble in distinguishing your own wishes from the wishes in which you were manipulated as well as you might have a fear of responsibility.
What can you do about this?
As I have just mentioned, for some people these issues can be rather deep so they will need some professional help for resolving them. Even if, in your case it is not thus advanced, some quick solutions will not be effective.
Yet, there are some exercises which will help you to understand yourself better. The simplest one is providing your own diary in which you will allow yourself to express all of your feelings, reactions to different events and emotions. Practising it for some time, you will feel better connection with yourself.
Another Interesting exercise is a time travel in which you should think about the time when you were around seven years old. Think about your hobbies and dreams during that period of your life and you might have come across something which you actually try doing now. It is possible, that in such a way you will be able to understand your needs and find something which you will enjoy doing in your adult life.
Fear
Undeniably, another culprit for our inability to understand ourselves is fear.
For example, some people are completely aware of their real needs and dreams deep in their mind. Yet, achieving these goals will require huge changes in their lives, leaving the comfort zone and going into the world of uncertainty which always scares people. That is why we might resign from fulfilling our dreams for the sake of staying safe in the place where we know what to expect.
Other people are afraid of a failure, while there are also people who are afraid of achieving success. The latter one sounds somewhat controversial although it is absolutely understandable since in many cases success for example at work means getting more responsibilities on an absolutely new level which can frighten us.
What can you do about that?
The first step in battling your fear is admitting you are experiencing this feeling in the first place. You should understand that failure can happen to anyone and the world itself is very dynamic for everyone no matter how successful and prominent a person is.
Then, you should work on your fears. According to many experts, people tend to understand clearly what they do not want to get rather than what they really want. Try to register each of these negative ideas about your future and right them down. Then, try to come up with some respond to it. For instance, whenever your inner voice will tell you there is no need to bother about your wishes since you will never achieve them anyway, think about the sense of suffering for your entire life because of never trying to do what you really want. Is there any sense? Giving your goals a shot will give you real chances of success whereas passive suffering will never give you a slightest possibility of reaching the destination of your dreams.
Use this technique and you will feel more confident even within a couple of weeks.
No matter what exactly doesn’t allow you to understand yourself, do not put too much pressure and make yourself guilty for still not being able to come up with a plan for your future.