Hold on tight to your dreams
We have a confession to make. We lock our doors at night.
That’s right. The house that contains martial artists (the majority of us have black belt ranks) actually has working locks to help deter anyone thinking of coming in uninvited. What’s more, we lock our cars and when we ride our bikes, we lock them up too. Our offices have locks and we even make sure our mailbox is locked up and secure, despite the fact that many people who live on country roads have boxes which can be easily accessed. We do our best to try and protect everything. Especially our dreams.
Monty Roberts is the son of a horse trainer. As a young boy, Monty would travel from stable to stable helping his dad, learning what to do and what he now admits more of what not to do. He missed a lot of time in high school, but when asked to write an essay on what career he wanted to pursue, Monty handed in a seven-page essay describing how he wanted to build and own a horse ranch. He got an “F”.
When requesting a reason from the teacher as to why he received such a low mark, he was told his dream was unrealistic, as he had no money and no ways to get it from his itinerant family. Just obtaining the land and breeding stock alone would be too much for him to see the realization of his fantasy. The teacher then informed him that if he rewrote the essay with a more possible goal, the grade would be reconsidered. It took about a week, but Monty ended up handing back his original unchanged paper to the teacher and said, “You can keep the F and I’ll keep my dream.”
Today, Monty Roberts is a highly successful trainer and has a 4,000 square foot house on a 200 acre ranch in San Ysidro, California. He also still has that paper. It’s framed and hanging over his fireplace. As for the teacher, he ended up bringing 30 kids to camp out on the ranch for a week.
When he was leaving the ranch after that week, the teacher apologetically told Monty that when Monty was in his class, he was a dream stealer. He had actually stolen a lot of students’ dreams back then, but fortunately, Monty had enough gumption not to give up on his.
What’s your dream? Do you want to be healthier? Lose weight? Learn to play an instrument? Do you want to own your own business? Buy a new or better house? Travel to a world destination? Get a black belt in a martial art?
It’s great to have dreams and most of the time, it’s going to take some work to achieve them, but they are possible. Sometimes the work comes in keeping them secure from a person who wants to steal them from you. Sometimes, you need to lock your dreams up by ignoring the naysayers and the people who aren’t willing to put in the effort to see the same dream become a reality. You can’t blame them. After all, your dreams aren’t theirs and so to them, it would never come true. To you, though, that person who wants to achieve that formidable accomplishment, it is possible; as long as you keep moving forward.