Getting your dreams out of your head.

October 7, 2015

My job is a quite peculiar one really, in that it’s not the kind of work you can read about in a book on careers, and you certainly don’t grow up with an ambition to do what I do. Mostly because it’s a bit obscure and niche. However, what my job does allow me to do is work with some very creative and entrepreneurial types who not only dream big dreams, they translate those dreams and ideas into reality. This last bit is crucial. Unless you take action you can dream all you like, but it just stays as a dream floating around meaninglessly in your head – which is of no benefit to anyone or anything.

Winding back a few days, I was walking my slightly eccentric German Shepherd Dog ‘Flick’ around my local woods when I stumbled across an amazing creation. Built entirely out of scraps of wood, old pallets and junk stood a new structure. Where there was just a few days ago, a woodland trail stood a rickety mountain bike ramp. Standing about 8-feet off the ground and about 10-feet long it had a ramp one side leading up from the ground and a partial ramp the other side ending in mid air. It looked incredible. I guess the basic idea was to come tearing down the trail, fire yourself and the bike up the ramp, try to keep your balance on the narrow timber planks along the top and then hurl yourself off the end, landing back on the trail – hopefully in one piece. It looked totally death defying and will probably cause someone to break their neck at some point, but it really got me thinking;

Some kids have looked at a trail and dreamed for something more. They haven’t got much money, they’ve just got an idea. So they scour around for some wood, and building with only what they can find, they piece together an amazing mountain bike obstacle.  It had only just gone up so I can imagine that next time I go there (I’m away from home again at the moment) they will have extended it, added some extra reinforcement or sections and modified the approach or exit based on the experience of the first few goes. I love it!

It’s what I was saying earlier. They looked at a woodland trail and saw in their minds a mountain bike course. They didn’t have much, but building with what they had they turned a dream into a reality. One of them will probably end up employing us all one day …

We all have dreams. It’s part of being a human being. We were made with an incredible capacity for imagination and vision. So why is it that so few of us turn our dreams into a reality? Maybe it’s fear? Perhaps it’s laziness? Maybe we’re scared of failure? Perhaps some of us are more risk adverse than others? Or maybe it’s just simply that life takes over and somehow in some way the dreams start to wither and die as you knuckle down and crack on through life.

I think us blokes – we’re meant to more than just dream.  I think inside of us all is that kid who looks at a trail and sees a bicycle ramp. You may even have built one yourself as a kid once upon a time …

So what’s the big dream now? What’s floating around in your head? Why not turn it into a reality. After all, there’s no rehearsal time is there. It reminds me of the great Roosevelt quote;

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”

Tags: dreams, risk, roosevelt