If you can dream and not make dreams your master
These are the infamous lines of Rudyard Kipling from his poem “If”. This poem has played a singular role in defining me what I am today. I carry this poem in my purse and not only in times of need and crisis, but sometimes just for some self motivation I read this poem and it has never failed to electrify my senses and rekindle the passion for life. Yet, I would beg to disagree with Rudyard Kipling regarding the very lines that I have quoted and I wish he had written it
If you can make dreams your master and work like a slave for your dreams.
How many of us day dream about our life? How many of us start our day in the toilet seat with those five minutes of powerful dreaming and perfect planning for the day, living out the activities of the day mentally as we wish them to occur. The four by four feet cubicle is a perfect dream spot. And then another great dream spot is your car. You get inside the car, zip up the windows, switch on the music, adjust the air conditioner and start your drive. It’s then a private universe, where you are the king. As the outside world zooms past in fast pace, how many times we find ourselves taking off on our own track? Its dangerous I know, but involuntarily I have done it many times. Even when I have driven through the busiest of the roads, at the end when I arrive, I wouldn’t remember a thing about the journey. But I had just established the greatest business empire of the world! And yes, ofcourse I had been dreaming all along the journey for sure. Most of the spectacular feats that I have achieved in my life have all been the ones that I have dreamt about. There are things I used to dream and relive over a thousand times in mind, which, at the time of dreaming were the most impossible things that any sane mind would reasonably believe that it would come true. And in my conscious mind, I too believed and would tell myself that its mere stupidity to even dream of such a thing. But subconsciously, somehow I enjoyed this day dreaming and would continue to do so. And in more than many cases, my so called impossible dreams would become a reality sooner than later. It has happened time and again. Many a times I would get carried away and disclose what I was dreaming about to my friends and my friends would admonish me that I am too outspoken and explained that people would term it as arrogance and even I may be subjected to shame if I don’t achieve my dreams. But the fear of not achieving my dreams has never been able to prevent me from dreaming.
Now coming to some motivational talk. I feel dreams always come with a power to achieve them and make them a reality. If you are passionate about a certain thing and dream and relive it a thousand times, your subconscious mind is being channelised into that direction and works silently towards your objective. All your actions and thoughts are directed towards that and combined with conscious efforts at the superficial level, it almost always makes it a reality. There are so many examples that I can quote from my personal life, that I have dreamt and enacted in my mind before they actually became true. But what equally matters is that your dreams must be substantiated by concrete actions on ground. Many times, even if I didn’t want to do a thing consciously, my subconscious mind would drive my conscious mind towards that end which would finally see me achieve my dreams. I must also confess, that many times I have pushed myself to do things even when I was down and out, to save my face, because I couldn’t let it go just like that as I had already disclosed to my friends, which may range from a mere mention to a loud boasting about what I had intended to achieve. Finally to conlcude, I would just mention a line from the greatest book of all times on pursuing your dreams, The Alchemist, by Paulo Celho.
If you are passionate about your dreams, the whole world will conspire to see that it is realized.
And it has been one hundred percent true in my life! Today if people hear what I am dreaming about tomorrow, they will certainly laugh. But then, they laughed even yesterday when I told them what I would be today. And I am not too much off the target!!
