You’re Killing Your Dreams And Ideas One Thought At a Time

We all do it even if we don’t realize it: kill our own dreams.

Seth Godin calls it “the resistance”, other people might call it fear. It really doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s still there, it still kills your dreams. Like it or not.

Our own thoughts are our worst enemy when it comes to ideas and dreams. They will kill that awesome idea you just had in a split second. You won’t find a better assassin of dreams than your own damn thoughts. No outside naysayer will hurt you more than your internal naysayer, your internal “I will fail” voice. It kills billions of dreams and ideas every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

I’ll be frank with you, I have that naysayer in me. I’m a human, aren’t I? I’ve had that nagging voice in my head “You will fail, you will fail, you will fail” for as long as I can remember. It killed many dreams and ideas I’ve had. It’s genocide in my head!

Past Naysaying

My current business venture, viktorix.com (now eventstant.com), almost didn’t survive. It was conceived last summer (2010) and I jumped on the wagon to get it going but the naysayer in me began to voice its unneeded opinion, “You can’t do this. You’ll fail just like you’ve failed with this or that. Why are you even trying? Come on, it’s so much easier not to do it.” It won the battle, viktorix.com was put to rest for several months. I honestly thought that it was dead, but to my surprise, it was just in a coma waiting for something or someone to give it a new life. With my girlfriend’s support (thanks Britney), which I didn’t have in the beginning, I brought it back from the dead and put a fresh, new life into it. Her support was so loud I couldn’t hear the naysayer inside me. Today, the positive feedback from the readers keeps that voice away from viktorix.com.

Today’s Naysaying

The reason I began writing this post is I had that voice start nagging me to quit, to give up on another dream and idea I have. Working on a business plan for a major venture that would complement viktorix.com is a tremendous amount of work. It’s not easy in the first place, but it’s even harder when your own mind is trying to prevent you from doing it because “it thinks” you will fail. Even if I do fail, so what? I will use that failure as a building block for my future success. I will learn from it.

Who are you kidding? The competition will eat you alive. How can you compete and win over your market share from the competition? You can’t do it. You’re nothing. Stop before you embarrass yourself.

Almost verbatim from my head this morning when I was checking out some information about our possible competition. It almost got to me, it had its grip on me. But I remembered something that every entrepreneur knows, or at least should know, “Your competition doesn’t have your greatest asset. YOU!”

That thought was the “fuck you!” to the naysayer inside me (excuse the language). The competition can have the latest technology, bigger budget, bigger everything. But what they will never have is me. That’s the greatest asset I need to leverage to succeed.

It Will Never Stop

The naysayer inside you will try really hard to kill your dreams and ideas as soon as they pop up in your head. It will never go away. It will always be there. But you can’t stop it from realizing those dreams and ideas. It’s such a wonderful feeling accomplishing them, reaching them.

Getting support from your friends, family, and even your online friends that you have never met in real life will give you the power to overcome your destructive thoughts and help you realize those dreams and grand ideas!

Even the simple gesture of looking at yourself in the mirror and saying “Fuck you! I’m doing it” will make you feel better and help you minimize that nagging voice. Don’t let it get the better of you and destroy an awesome idea or a dream that puts a smile on your face one thought at a time.

What was your last dream or idea killed by the naysaying voice inside you? If you overcome it, how did you do it? What or who helped you? Tweet me.