As a coach focusing on professional and business success I’ve had the joy of working with many clients who passionately want to reach life-long dreams.  Recently I recommended Paulo Coelho’s book the Alchemist to a client and was reminded of it’s powerful impact on me.  In the infancy stage of pursing my dream to have my own business as a coach I was doing one of my favorite past time activities-  strolling through the aisles of a bookstore.  The Alchemist literally jumped off a table as I walked by.  Hmm . . . I picked it up – read the description on the back cover and thought “this book was written for me.”  Indeed it helped pushed me through my own obstacle to moving toward my dream.  In the prologue Coelho outlines four obstacles to why we don’t pursue our dreams – or what he calls your personal calling.  Here is my adaptation of those 4 obstacles:

We don’t pursue our calling because:

1.  It’s buried. We bury our personal calling after a lifetime of being told that what we want is impossible, we can’t have it, or is otherwise impractical. We need the courage to reconnect with and rediscover our dreams and life purpose.  This can be especially true for introverts as we already receive a steady diet of messages that tell us our way of being in the world is not valued.  I know many introverts who loved the arts, painting, drawing, or dance and never received support for these interests (how will you make a living doing that?).  Yet when we push our true calling underground we suffer.  We may turn to negative coping strategies to numb out.

Let’s begin pealing back the layers of shoulds, can’ts and have to’s to allow your true passion to emerge. A way to being in this process is to remember what really excited you when you were young. Did you spend time taking things apart and figuring out how to put them back together? Did you spend hours playing teacher with your friends loving the chalk board, and lesson book? Did you spend endless weeks concocting formulas and almost blowing up your fort in the backyard for a science project? Explore what your passions were as a child to help you tap into what you buried.

2.  Love. We know our calling in life but are worried that pursuing it will hurt others in some way. We may have a fear of surpassing our father’s success, or letting down the expectations of our mothers, or hurting someone else that matters to us in our lives. The antidote to this obstacle is to deepen your understanding of how love can be an impetus toward pursing your dreams. Those who genuinely want you to be happy will support you on your journey – even if you are “marching to the beat of your own drum”.  This is especially important for introverts who have a tendency to push our true desires underground.  In our efforts to preserve relationships and avoid conflict we can easily fall prey to this obstacle.  So let’s examine this one more closely together.

How can the people you love support you in manifesting your calling?  Do a freewrite on this question and see what emerges.

• What are the stories I tell myself about how this person will react to my success
• Is this story true?

• • Give evidence that this story is true. What is the counter-evidence (thus the story is not true)?
  • When has this person supported me to be successful?
  • If I were to ask this person to support me – what would I ask of them?
    Also make a list of those you care about and for each person answer the following questions:
• Based on your answers start asking those you love to support you towards realizing your dreams.

3. Fear of defeat. It may seem less painful to not pursue your dream than to pursue it and fail. When we go for our dream with 100% effort and fail we cannot attribute our failure to not really trying – and so that is an enormous threat. Yet defeat, setbacks and challenges are part of any journey – so we need to be prepared to bounce back and be resilient when we face defeat. As Paulo says “The secret of life is to fall 7 times and get up 8 times.” In fact, overcoming defeats builds confidence and is greatly satisfying. A journey with obstacles makes the reward so much more satisfying. Also obstacles can serve as a test for us – do we really want to achieve this life goal?

4. Fear of success. The 4th obstacle is the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought our whole lives. “The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt.” We compare ourselves to others and since they failed at their dreams we think it is unfair to fulfill ours. We forget about all the blood, sweat and tears we endured; all the hurdles we had to jump over in order to get to this place. A lot of people who are within inches of their personal calling – where they can practically touch it, taste it, and feel it – then make a number of foolish mistakes and never reach their goal. This can be the most seductive obstacle because it has a martyr like quality – renouncing joy and the need for success.Marianne Williamson captures this fear of success with conviction, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous talented and fabulous? Actually who are you not to be?”

Exercise: Moving Forward with the End Result as Your Inspiration

Step into your own magnificence by living in this moment as if you already reached your dream. Imagine you are at your end goal.

• Be your success! Do a freewrite every day for a week describing what it is like to have manifested your dream. Describe in detail your life now, how it feels, the joys and triumphs. Keep the success of having reached the end point in your being as you go through each day. Enjoy the success!
• Create your list of action steps. What did it take for you to get there? Write those answers down. They are now your action steps. The action steps can be big and small.
• Take daily actions. Do one action from your above list daily towards realizing this goal. Live from this vision and your certainty that you will manifest it.
• Succeed with experienced support. Hire me or another coach to create an action plan and be held accountable in completing that plan and manifesting your dream.