Getting an opportunity to follow your dreams can be a great experience for many people through work or other avenues such as side hustles. However, it may not be a sustainable route for many of us. In this blog, I talk about three reasons not to follow your dreams and focus more on practicality.
Prolonged financial instability
Many educators and advisors who advise children that they should follow their dreams are usually aiming it on the prospect of encouraging and flourishing these dreams.
However, most of this advice is not followed by the practicalities of real life. For example, how would somebody be able to pay their bills on time, and how will they make ends meet if their particular dream is not very financially stable. To keep your dreams afloat, you need to have some financial stability to fund that dream. This is quite common within the arts industry for those who want to become the next famous musician or award-winning actor or individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit but are not looking to start work.
Limiting other experiences
The idea of following your dreams means that it has a very rigid pathway that you may have developed as a child or as a teen growing up. Since then, dreams may change some components of that dream due to technological developments and the corporate workplace.
But here’s the question, are you the same person you were five or ten years ago? The answer to that may vary for each person. However, a substantial number of people would say they changed as a person, and their goals and ambitions have also changed. And this is simply due to them having more exposure to different workplaces, cultures and other interests. Limiting yourself to following your dream means that you narrowed the window to exploring other avenues that could enhance your career or personal fulfilment in other areas.
Illusion based thinking
Think about it this way: when you dream of something, you are sold an illusion of the enjoyable parts of the role or activity. When you are sold an illusion, it is difficult to think about the potential difficulties and hurdles that might come your way. When they enter your path, you may feel like you may want to give up on that particular role, or you may underperform when your illusion is broken. However, the ground reality of the logistics of work and your endurance to tolerate it might be a very different story.