Dare to Dream

To successfully Clear your Clutter Forever you must be willing to dare to dream.

Most clutterholics fall into one of two types: either, given how many times we’ve tried and failed to clear our clutter in the past, we’re afraid to dream about our Clutter Free Life because we don’t believe we’ll be able to succeed, or we spend all our time dreaming about the future and spend no time actually ‘Doing the Doing’.

Yet human beings are capable of extraordinary things when we set ourselves extraordinary goals and dreams, ‘Do the Doing’ and refuse to let the challenges we inevitably face stop us achieving our dream.

Think Man on the Moon, Covid-19 vaccines, Rosa Parks, J.K. Rowling, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Nicholas Winton, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, the Mars Rover Team – the list is endless.

Incredible examples of people who dared to dream. In fact, not just dream, but to dream BIG and make their dreams come true. 

They dared to dream big and achieved extraordinary things by dealing with and overcoming the many challenges they all faced.

It’s easy to read their stories and feel that our dreams are small in comparison, as if our goals and dreams are insignificant compared to what their contributions to the world have been and the difference they’ve made to millions of people’s lives.

But before you decide to give up on your Clutter Free Dream – (again) – let’s just have a bit of a reality check and look at 5 things that all these incredible people and historic events have in common that we can learn from and apply to our Clutter Clearing Dream.

1. Failure

They all experienced massive failures on their journey to achieving their dreams. J.K. Rowling was rejected by 12 major publishers before Harry Potter was accepted by the 13th. (Clearly not an unlucky number for her). Henry Ford was made bankrupt twice before launching the Ford Motor Company. 

Thomas Edison reportedly failed over 10,000 times before inventing the commercial lightbulb. When – after over 9,000 failed attempts – he was asked by a newspaper reporter if he felt like a failure and if he should give up, Edison simply stated “Why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitively over 9,000 ways an electric lightbulb will NOT work. Success is almost in my grasp.” He was right, despite there being over 1,000 more attempts before he achieve his dream.

Walt Disney – who was also made bankrupt before success – was fired from his first job because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” (!)

What can we learn from these extraordinary people? Simple. You’re going to fail on your way to achieving the dream – and that’s OK. Just don’t give up.

2. Learn from Mistakes

A year before landing on the moon, Neil Armstrong was almost killed in a simulation of a lunar descent. All the flight controls completely failed and as a result he had to test the ejector seat 200ft above ground. They estimated that if he had ejected just 0.5 seconds later than he did, he would have died. They learnt from the mistakes that caused the flight controls to fail on the test (thank goodness) and fixed them ready for the actual landing on the moon a year later.

What can we learn from this? Failure isn’t final unless you quit! As I always say, there’s no such thing as failure, only feedback. The only time we fail is when we fail to learn from the feedback.

As J.K. Rowling herself said: “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”

3. Patience and Persistence

Despite all their failures, none of the people who achieved their dreams gave up. They believed they would succeed eventually.

J.K. Rowling had the idea for Harry Potter in 1990. She had just 3 chapters by 1993. By 1995 she had a full script that was being rejected. It was finally accepted in 1996. It took her 6 years from dreaming to completing, and she’s probably achieved a few dreams since then that she never even imagined possible back in 1990.

What can we learn from them?  Stop focusing on the speed and focus on the significance. Trust that you will get there. It will take as long as it needs to take to get to your goal safely. It matters not how fast you achieve your dream as long as you keep moving forward.

4. Prioritise

The only reason why these people succeeded at achieving the dreams they dared to dream is that they prioritised making time to ‘Do the Doing’. They didn’t procrastinate. They didn’t give up. They made time to do what was needed to get just a little bit closer to their dream each time. They recognised the significance of each tiny step towards their dream when others around them thought they were mad.

J.K. Rowling didn’t allow life to get in the way. She had no job, no money, had a child and suffered from depression yet she still prioritised making what time she could to ‘do the doing’. In 1996 and 1997 for the sequel she prioritised time and wrote in a café. For the final book in the Harry Potter series, she took herself off to The Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh for  six  months to focus on and finish the final book. Thomas Edison probably prioritised a fair bit of time to ‘do the doing’ if he failed over 10,000 times to invent the lightbulb…..

What can we learn from this? If you dare to dream and you’re focused on the dream you’ll prioritise making regular time to work on achieving that dream. You may not be able to prioritise as much time as you’d like as often as you’d like, but SOME regular time is always better than none.

5. Focus on the Dream

Walt Disney’s dream was to build a theme park where children and adults alike could have fun together. Nicholas Winton’s dream was to spare children from the horrors of the Holocaust. Rosa Parks had the dream of freedom and peace. Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s dream was for all people to have access to the best information at any time.

All successful people have a clear dream and it’s that dream that drives them to keep going after the inevitable failures, it helps them be patient and persistent, helps them see the value of prioritising time to work towards their dream and learn from their mistakes.

Remember: 

You only need to succeed once. 

So what’s YOUR dream?

If your dream is to clear your clutter FOREVER and you’re ready to get Clare’s help to achieve that dream, find out how you can get started on your 7 Step Journey to a Clutter Free Life with the support of others and save 25% here:  https://journey.clutterclearing.net/gjmccco