What's Holding You Back From Following Your Dreams?

What is it that you want in this world? what do you truly desire? Think of that and then ask yourself why haven't you got it?

Just this morning I was trying to decide on what I wanted to do for my Christmas break. I am on the other side of the world, I cannot go home because the time would be too short and the flights too expensive (I would be paying a lot of money to fly back to New Zealand, from Italy, only to be there for a couple of weeks and then have to fly back again). So during this little dilemma of mine, I began thinking what could I possibly do with my time, because the idea of being in Milan, by myself, doing nothing, is slightly depressing. I had a bunch of ideas jumping around in my head, maybe I could find a cheap flight somewhere I have never been before, fly to Germany to visit family, or volunteer in an elephant camp in asia. I have options but somehow these options have a flaw or two about them. I could go somewhere random by myself, but the catch is, its will be by myself, and on christmas... I'm not too sure how I feel about that. Visiting family in Germany would be awesome if flights and transport didn't cost a bomb. Lastly volunteering somewhere has once again has costs with it, because most of the programmes I want to volunteer for are in asia or south america, and whilst the programme itself is reasonably prices, flights are another story.

I am a strong believer in going for and getting what I want in life, and that if you stay positive and believe, than anything is possible. But I still have moments where I doubt, where the question, "is this really possible?" comes to mind. Everybody has these doubts play on there mind, that little devil sitting on your shoulder whispering "do you really think you can do it? what about those debts you have to pay off? lets be realistic it's for people with money" in your ear. Once that seed of doubt is planted in our minds, we sometimes act on it, coming up with all these reasons as to why it is not possible.

This is the number 1 reason as to why more than 80% of the world are not going after their dreams, are only reaching for what they believe is "possible" and "achievable". I was watching Charlie and The Chocolate Factory yesterday and a quote that Grandpa George said stood out to be "There's plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket, there's only five of them in the whole world, and that's all there's ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common as money. Are you a dummy?". Lets think of it this way, your golden ticket is your dream. When you have a chance to go after that dream, don't give it up because of something like money. Money comes and goes. It is something you can always get back. As for an experience, that's a different story. You may not get another chance at it. An experience is worth so much than the price of money. Ask yourself this question, "what would you rather have in life, a million dollars or a million hours worth of unforgettable experiences?".

People often question themselves wether they have enough time for something. "Oh I would go on that holiday, but I have work to do and not enough time, it will have to wait". Or "I cannot do this because it will take too long and I could be doing something else in this time". It is true that time is precious. We only have one life and unfortunately we are not all vampires with a clock that ticks continuously, at one point that clock will stop. Humans are able to calculate the timing of a landing down to a fraction of a second but we cannot time the time our hearts will stop beating, We don't have our life plan written out on our birth certificate, so we don't know when it will happen, but it's not about the amount of time you have, it's about how you spend it.

If someone told you, you had one day, or one week to live, what would you do with that time? I bet all of those worries about money and not being able to afford things would go straight out of your head. If you were given a time limit, you would go live it wouldn't you, you would want to do as much as you could in that time. But my question is why do we need someone to tell us that we only have a certain amount of time left, for us to make something of it? Why can't we just take the opportunity to live the life we want NOW, and not just sit around hoping that things are going to happen.

A good friend of mine once quoted; “If you were going to die soon and had only one place to visit, one thing to do, one phone call to make? Where would you go? What would you do? Who would you call? What would you say? And if you know the answers, why are you still waiting?".

How many people do you think you have met in your lifetime? And how many of them are you still friends with? When I say friends, I don't mean the amount of friends that you have on your facebook page, because lets be honest you probably don't talk with half of them, I mean friends that you contact on a regular basis, that you really know on a personal basis. The number has dropped quite dramatically hasn't it?

People go out of your life as fast as they come into it. Through traveling, I have met so many people, people who at a time I thought I was close with but then you realise it's not the case because you move on with your life and slowly lose contact. Do you remember your best friend in school, that person that you swore you would always keep in contact with, and remain BFF with? Most of the time it turns out that you lose contact with that person, most people even end up not talking at all. But that's life sadly. The hard fact is, that people change. They grow up and move on with their lives. They find new people that they become close with and someone they feel they will keep for the rest of their lives. The problem is that sometimes people let other people hold them back from what they truly want because they are scared of losing them, scared of being alone.

I have a friend who was traveling and naturally she met a guy. At the time this guy was all she thought about, she fell in love. She still wanted to travel and had so many things she wanted to do, but the guy she was with didn't want the same things and asked her to stay with him. After many hours of contemplating, and many tears of confusion, she decided she would stay, even though deep deep down there was a small gut feeling that she wasn't doing the right thing. For 4 years they stayed together, she got a full time job, and they brought an apartment together. She was happy, but at the same time she felt as if something was missing. One day out of the blue he just left her, said to her that things weren't working out. In the entire 4 years she had centred her entire life around this guy, she had lost friends, she had given up travelling opportunities, all for this one guy who just dropped her. For 4 months she was lost in a sea of depression, she didn't know what to do with herself. They sold the apartment and she quit her job and moved back in with her parents. A lot of those 4 months were spent locked up in her room crying and wondering if it was even worth living.

We all the things that we want to do, but sometimes something or someone comes a long and tells us that we should be doing something different. If you have a gut feeling that something isn't right, even the smallest feeling, then think twice about giving up what you are going for, because often we give up things and end up regretting our decisions. My friend ended up getting over this situation (though it took time), she finally woke up and began doing what she had originally planned to do, to travel. She learnt a valuable lesson, one that costed her a lot of precious time, "don't give up your dreams for someone elses". Just remember that you will meet new people, and make new friends, like an old saying "there are plenty more fish in the sea".

Fear can either be your best friend or your enemy. You can use it to fuel you or to drain you. In the end it is your decision what you do with your life. But ask yourself, would you rather be doing something that you love, something that makes you happy to get out of bed every morning, or would you rather do something that you are just settling for, something that you wish you could change? We have the choice and the power to do anything and everything we want in the world. If you want to become a millionaire, want to travel the world, want to invent something, what's stopping you from doing it? Don't use pitiful excuses like "I don't have enough money", or "It's impossible to get into that industry, you have to have connections". If you sit around thinking of excuses as to why you cannot do it, then your just admitting defeat, but if you put your mind to something, if you get up off your butt and do something about, if you believe hard enough and turn all of that negative energy into something positive then it will happen, and you will see results.