Once upon a time a baby was born.

When this baby was born, his mother and father were massacred. 

Luckily for this baby, a herd of sheep happened to walk by soon after.

One of the sheep in the herd came to the isolated baby and whispered “bahaaa, bahaa.” The baby followed with the herd and soon after was one of the herd.

Then one day a group of tigers came to pass these sheep and slaughtered all of them.

The baby, now a grown animal stood there repeating all he had ever been taught, “bahaa, bahaa.”

This animal in absolute shock had his entire herd murdered and he whimpered waiting for his death when one of the tigers grabbed him by the neck and pulled him to a nearby river.

The now enormous animal looked in the water and saw his reflection for the first time. He looks and sees that he isn’t a sheep.

This tiger still dazed and confused doesn’t know what to do.

The other tigers that had just murdered his herd forced this tiger to eat his brethren.

And then something magical happened.

The tiger felt something inside of him so strong, a power he had never experienced which has lived in him his whole life.

And the tiger Roared.

This story is paraphrased from a documentary I watched about a Tony Robbins seminar. 

Dream It | Do It

Why We’re Confused About What We Want

We don’t choose who are parents are before we’re born. We don’t choose the body we’re going to inhabit throughout life.

We don’t choose whether we’re born into money or poverty. Whether we’ll have siblings or be an only child. We don’t choose the values that we’ll be raised with.

All of these things were chosen for us or were purely chance (depending on what you believe).

And as we grow older, we are raised with certain values, beliefs and prejudices. Our parents do their best to raise us and mold us into what they believe is a valuable individual.

Formal education and schooling tells us what’s important to learn and understand. We learn from our friends what’s cool and what isn’t.

All around us from the moment we’re born, we’re subject to thousands of influences from the people and places we happen to be born into.

These influences tell us what it means to be successful (everyone has a different idea of it), the difference between good and bad (everyone has a different idea of it), how to feel  in response to different situations,  what to believe in.

And the truth is that no matter who you are or where you’re from, you have been subject to all of these influences from your first moments of life.

And then comes adult age. The “responsible” age during which we’re expected to find jobs, start and raise families of our own…

At one point (or many points) throughout life many of us feel confused about what we want.

On top of that, when we ask ourselves what’s really important, we’re confused about how to go about answering the question.

Without ever suspecting it, we have been told how and what to think, feel, strive for and dream about our entire lives and when we finally realize that we’re not sure what we want, we have difficulty opening up because its questionable whether we’ve ever thought for ourselves.

But there is a way out of this cycle of conformism.

Dream It.

Once you realize that you ACTUALLY have a choice about the life you end up living, a beautiful opportunity opens up.

The only important question each of us has to ask ourselves is, “What can I do with my life that might lead to a sense of satisfaction at the end of it all?”

There is nothing, absolutely nothing more important than asking ourselves what we want out of life and whether our actions conform to our dreams.

So the first step in this process of truly growing up is asking yourself what you want and why.

The reason its so important to question your answer (provide a “why”) about the life you want to live is that we often find we’re not exactly sure about the reason for our answer.

The result is an opportunity to actually face the question with honesty, and an acceptance of our actually not knowing what we want.

When we can become honest with ourselves and see past our typical responses to what’s important to us in our lives, we tend to really start looking for truth and honesty that helps us answer the question.

Only by being honest with ourselves can we begin to really form a conception about a life that’s worth dreaming about.

Do It.

When you question what’s really important to you and why, you might be surprised by the answers. You may or may not actually care about making a ton of money. You may or may not want to be famous. You may or may not care about having children.

The answers you come to aren’t nearly as important as whether your actions conform to what you believe is important – what you dream about.

The most frustrating thing in life is consistently doing things that don’t conform to our idea of what’s important. 

You can literally live ANY life you want. You can LITERALLY do WHATEVER you want provided you believe you genuinely want it, and you actively strive to have it.

Limitations are almost always mental constructs we believe in only because we rarely question or struggle against them.

Again, honesty with yourself is the key.

Do your actions conform to your sincere dreams?

Which actions do, and which don’t?

What can you change about the way that live your life that might lead to fulfilling your conception of what a dream life would be?