Follow Your Dream, There's No Time to Waste

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani teenager who suffered an assassination attempt at 15 and won a Nobel Prize at 17. Her dream is that someday all girls will have access to education.

She’s a girl with two lives: one as a teenager who likes to joke and play with her siblings and worry about school, and another as an activist who has spoken at the UN and met with presidents and government officials all around the world. Malala has taught us an important lesson: we should never give up the pursuit of our dreams.

As children, the future looks like an endless horizon, a piece of modeling clay fresh out of the wrapper. But over time we start to bury our dreams under phrases like “what are you going to do?” and “that’s life.” We forget about the things we wanted so much to achieve, until the horizon gets smaller and we settle for what we have.

The time has come to put your dreams on paper, to make a list of everything you ever wanted to do, no matter how ambitious it is (being an astronaut, being a singer, traveling the world, seeing your favorite singer in concert). Make a conscious decision about the direction you want your life to take.

Reasons to dream

Having a dream isn’t simply having an idea about what you’d like to do; it’s much more than that. It means sensing how it smells in that moment, thinking about the conversations you’ll have with the people around you, experiencing the sensation of seeing your dream fulfilled, etc.

Having a dream involves creating a reality that you can see, touch, smell, and feel every time you dream, even when you’re awake. It involves stitching together a mental picture that will serve as the foundation for your hopes, and as a safety net during the more delicate times when you have to balance yourself before you can move forward.

To give you a little push, below we give you some reasons why it’s so important to dream, some motivation to think about your dreams extensively for a while.

People who dream more, achieve more

Dreaming means having a goal, and having a goal will motivate you to move forward, to challenge yourself to achieve something new each day. People who don’t dream limit their reality by building walls, which will keep them from seeing the future as an opportunity.

Big dreams aren’t just for highly skilled people. People often achieve their dreams simply because they tried, and even though they failed a thousand times, they never gave up. They learned from all of their mistakes and transformed them into opportunities.

One of the most famous stories of perseverance is that of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb. To create the ideal filament, he tried many different types of fibers, until 1880 when he succeeded in making the first light bulb, which lasted 1500 hours. What stands out in Edison’s story? His perseverance and strong willpower.

Never underestimate the importance of fun

Fun is a fundamental element of every dream. Dreams should be fun, make you smile, make you passionate about achieving them. We spend so many hours working, so why not make it fun?

An interesting fact: there is an International Fun at Work Day, celebrated on April 1st. The goal is to bring cheer to the workplace and send the message that uniting fun and work can make employees enjoy their jobs more and fulfill their duties more effectively.

Choose a goal that matters, not just an easy one. When you have big goals, you have to make sure that your investment in them is worth it.

Take time to develop your dream. Even if it seems impossible or complicated, write it all down. Give it meaning and integrate it with your life. Don’t talk about your dream is if it were a separate paragraph; make it an important part of the story you write every day.