What does it take to be successful? In life? In business or career? In pursuing your dreams? We’ll assume that the goals you’ve chosen are not so far beyond your capabilities that they would be impossible to achieve, but even this statement is suspect because it may be your mind that is limiting you with its subliminal messages—such as “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that” or “I’m not worth that”—or your friends or family who doubt your ability to live your dream.
By the way, take a look again at the discussion in Blog 6 — Who Are You? Who Am I? about dreamboards and what they can do for you. Also see my review of DreamItAlive.com.
Successfully pursuing your dreams requires much more than just hard work, …which if you are truly passionate about what you’re doing, won’t even seem like work. It also takes commitment, plus passion and humility. Take a look at what some others experienced when pursuing their dreams:
W. H. Murray was a Scottish mountaineer and writer who was part of the 1951 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition. He is most famous for this quote:
What Murray is referring to is exemplified in this equation:
Commitment + Passion + Humility ==>Grace
True Commitment says to the Universe that this is what you will do.
Passion gives you the motivation and drive that keep you pursuing your dream no matter what the obstacles. Passion is also what makes the effort seem more like play.
Humility is acting from your heart, rather than from the ego or mind. In combination with commitment and passion, your humility is that aspect of your pursuit of your dream that opens you to Grace, or Divine intervention—what Murray refers to as Providence.
For me, humility seems to be the greatest challenge. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been very left-brained all my life—in other words, very much in my mind (ego). In my experience, there’s nothing humble about the mind. Even when I felt I was humble, I see now that there was an underlying arrogance—not something so much noticeable, but something that was just beneath the surface of pretty much everything I did because I was acting from my head rather than from my heart.
The ego wants for itself, and it acts with that goal—most of the time very cleverly to conceal its arrogance and selfishness. The ego is very good at hiding its true purposes. To actually see this is when you begin to live with inner integrity (see Blog 9 and Blog 10 for more on inner integrity).
The challenge for me is to speak and act from my heart, not from my head. As I continue to open my heart to humility, this becomes easier but it’s still a challenge! Where do you speak and act from? How can you refocus this?
In your pursuit of your dream, what role do commitment, passion, and humility play? Are they massively present, or do you just think about them occasionally? Or do you just wish they were present? Let us hear from you about how these have played in actualizing your dreams.
