I started talking about this a little bit in my February Learning Inventory, but I really felt like I needed to revisit it here.

I’ve said before that I think things tend to come at us in waves. Well, this idea of “Don’t get too good at the wrong thing” is one of those things. I’ve been wrestling with this idea for a couple years now, it seems, and I feel like it’s a thread that has revealed itself more and more lately, especially as I was reading Put Your Dream To The Test by John Maxwell. Here’s what I’m thinking…

We can actually become prisoners in our success. You graduate from college, and you have to find a job.  The rent is looming, and someone says, “Hey, you should look into… because you seem like you’d be good at it.” You apply for the job, and as fortune would have it (debatable), you get it. Now you’re now on your way to the American dream. You put your head down. You work hard. You move up the corporate ladder. You get really good at what you’re doing. Along the way, you pick up a spouse, two kids, a mortgage, and two car payments. The next thing you know, you’re 40 years old, and you realize that what you are doing for a living looks nothing at all like what you imagined it would when you were in college.

You express your frustration to your best friend, and they say, “Hey, you should start that company you always dreamed about” (or something along those lines). You get excited, and you say, “Yeah, you’re right! I have put it off long enough! I’m going to do it!” Then you remember…. mortgage, car payments, kid’s select soccer team, kid’s impending college tuition…

You’re paralyzed. The risk is just too much. Besides, you’ve already put so much time and effort into your current career. If you left now, everything you’ve put into it up to this point will all have been wasted (FYI: I do not agree with this line of thinking at all).

Then you forget all about the dream again. You’re trapped in the “American dream” that YOU created. You got really good at the wrong thing, and then you became financially and socially “obligated” to stay the course.

“90% of us, when asked about our passion, will cite somebody else’s dream.”
– Don Wettrick (from his interview with Joe Ferraro on the “One Percent Better Podcast.”)

If you feel like I’m talking to you, there are 3 things I want you to know:

1. You are not alone. There are A LOT of us out there that, at one point in time or another, either feel or have felt like we’ve been trapped in someone else’s dream. Most of the time, we’re not even sure how we got there. It’s a slow fade.
2. This post is NOT a call for us to abandon our families, careers, or obligations. I would never do or suggest that.
3. There is hope. We can take steps in the right direction. Depending on how far along we’ve gotten, our life may not ever look exactly like we envisioned it when we were young, but we can still take action and live the best version of our dreams possible.

I don’t know what your dream is. Sometimes I don’t even know exactly what my dream is. However, I do know that once we start identifying it, there are things we can do to move ourselves in the right direction. I love coaching coaches and helping people achieve their goals. I want to continue to grow in that area of my life, so I wake up at 5:00 almost every morning in order to read about leadership and write this blog before the rest of my household wakes up. Small steps in the right direction.

What steps can you take? What are the small “wins” that will lead you closer and closer to your dream?

When I sat down to write this, I remembered back to a video I made last summer when I was reading Pound the Stone by Joshua Medcalf. This video captured some of my thoughts on this very subject.

I also tried to figure out where I first heard, “Don’t get too good at the wrong thing.” I googled it, and I couldn’t find it. However, I did run across this very short article by Tim Ferriss from 2008. He approached “too good at the wrong thing” from a little bit different perspective, but I think it’s certainly applicable to what I’m talking about here.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/pf/0807/gallery.smartest_advice.moneymag/18.html

Thanks for reading. I hope that you are encouraged, no matter where you are in life, to start thinking about YOUR DREAMS. What are you doing now in order to live out those dreams? If you’re not doing anything, what small steps can you take in the right direction? At the very least, find a close friend this week, and share your dream with them. Begin the conversation. Don’t let fear paralyze you.

See you next time!