Motivation Monday: Dream Bigger Than Your Doubts

Someone once said that courage is not never being afraid. It is being afraid and doing it anyway.

That is all this post is about. That is all it has ever been about.

The Dream Comes First

So few people are blessed with a dream. And to have the talent, the time, and the tenacity to actually act on it takes an astounding amount of courage.

But it all starts with the dream.

Not the plan. Not the money. Not the perfect moment or the right connections or the guarantee that it is going to work. Just the dream. The thing that sits in the back of your head and will not leave you alone no matter how many times you tell yourself to be realistic.

If you have one of those, do not take it for granted. A lot of people never get one.

What Fear Actually Does to a Dream

Here is the thing about doubt. It is not loud. It does not show up and announce itself. It just quietly starts building a case.

What if it does not work. What if you are not good enough. What if you waste all that time and money and end up exactly where you started. What if people think you are crazy for even trying.

Your brain likes routine. It likes predictability. And chasing a dream gives you neither of those things. So your brain starts listing all the reasons to wait. To think it through a little more. To start next month, next year, when the timing is better.

Here is what actually happens when you wait. If you are not actively working on your dream, you will start coming up with all the reasons you are sure glad you never started. Inaction feels safe but it is not. It is just where doubt goes to grow.

The biggest dream killer is not failure. It is the delay before you even begin.

Start Before You Are Ready

When I started Bait Dogs Apparel I did not give myself a lot of room to doubt. The first two months, before we ever made a single sale, I knew that if we stalled out or waited too long on a decision it would become another dead dream. Just another idea I had that never became anything.

So I ran after it as hard as I could until it was a real thing.

If it all falls apart tomorrow I would be sad. But I would be proud of myself for doing something I have wanted to do my whole life. That is not nothing. That is actually everything.

I have done other things that scared me too. I did stand up comedy for about a year because making people laugh is something I have always loved and I finally decided to just go do it. Was it a little terrifying? Yes. Did I care? Not enough to stop me. There is only one way to find out what you are capable of, and it is not by thinking about it.

You Do Not Need to Be Ready. You Just Need to Start.

A lot of people hold themselves back with the belief that they are not talented enough, smart enough, or qualified enough to chase the thing they want.

Here is the truth. Every single person you admire, every person you look up to and want to be like, used to just be some regular person figuring it out. They were not grown in a lab. They were not beamed down from space with a set of special abilities the rest of us do not have.

Taylor Swift was not Taylor Swift until she became Taylor Swift.

Nobody starts as the finished version of themselves. You become that person by starting, failing, adjusting, and refusing to quit. When problems come up along the way, and they will, you will either already be the person who can solve them or you will very quickly become that person. Starting is what builds the skill.

What If It Actually Works

Here is something nobody talks about enough. Some people are not scared of failing. They are scared of succeeding.

Scared of what changes. Scared of what people expect from them. Scared of who they might have to become.

I will be honest. I have had moments where my business partner has posed a question or a possibility that made me think, "but what if it really works?" And that was a little scary too.

But here is how I think about it. My whole life has been figuring things out because I had no other option. So why not have the thing I am figuring out be something that leads to real success? If you are going to be solving hard problems either way, you might as well be solving them on the way to something great.

Do Not Get Caught Up in the Losses

Dreaming big does not mean winning every time. Nobody wins every time. Not the most successful entrepreneur you know. Not the most decorated athlete. Nobody.

Chasing a dream means getting knocked down along the way. It means things not working out the way you planned. It means adjusting, regrouping, and choosing to keep going when quitting would be a whole lot easier.

That is where Bite Back comes in. Not just as a slogan. As a way of operating. Every setback along the way is just another moment where you decide whether the dream is worth fighting for.

It is. Keep going.

Do It Right Now

If you have been sitting on something, a business, a creative project, a goal, a conversation you keep putting off, stop sitting on it.

Do literally anything. Right now. Today. Whatever the smallest possible first step is, take it. Stop thinking about it and start doing the thing.

It does not get better with more thinking. It gets better with more doing.

Courage is not never being afraid. It is being afraid and doing it anyway. It is being unsure and doing it anyway. It is having doubts and doing it anyway.

You have to do the dang thing.

We are the underdogs. We don't stay down, we bite back.