Integral Development Forum

Facing the Critics

In the pursuit of our daring dreams, we will always find critics along the way.

They are people who for all the right reasons and all of the best intentions are concerned about you and your dreams.

Too often, they speak from the depths of their own fears and shortcomings that became the barricades in their own lives.

Remember that the intention of the critic is usually good.

They are trying to save you from pain of embarrassment or failure.

Nobody has ever fully achieved a daring dream without walking through some pain and embarrassment and failure.

So, have grace for your critics, and hold on to the hope that perhaps your example of pursuing your own dream despite your fears and doubts will inspire them to make a similar choice in their own life.

That would be a day to celebrate indeed.

• Exercise:
  Identify the loudest critic in your life. What is the lie they are trying to get you to buy into? How can you combat that lie with truth?
  The best way I can combat is if I’ll stay persistent and will do all my best to achive my goals on a way to my dream

Fearing our dreams

Fear is a powerful distraction. It can keep us at a standstill instead of in a rhythm of forward movement towards our dream.

What about you? What are the fears that get in the way of your daring dream?

Fears are worth facing, because the fact is that the daring dream will always be bigger than these fears.

Sometimes we become afraid that our dreams do not match up with our abilities.

If you really know what it is that you want to do, if it’s a daring dream, a challenging dream, then —for the most part—the talents and abilities to do that are already within you.

Whatever our fears are, they can destroy any forward movement towards our dream. The goal, then, is to begin to overcome the fear.

Here’s one way to begin to overcome it: identify your fear.

• Exercise:
  Write down the specific fears you have about the daring dreams in your life.
  I afraid of being not understanded in my way of expression myself and therefore not reaching my potential

Healthy discontent

If you and I are to give expression to our full potential, we need to have a real dream, a daring dream, a big dream … one that will challenge and drive us onward.

The daydream focuses on the destination and the daring dream focuses on the journey.

The daydream cultivates unhealthy expectations, but the daring dream cultivates healthy discontent.

The goal is to allow feelings of discontent to pull us to become stronger, motivated, focused, determined, and passionate about becoming all that we are created to be.

Healthy discontent propels us towards our dream. It gives us reason and motivation to make changes and plans – it gives us fuel to add to the fire of our daring dream.

• Exercise:
  Identify one area of your life where you feel a healthy discontent (meaning you feel motivated and passionate to make a positive change). Then identify one area of your life where you feel an unhealthy discontent (meaning you feel jealous, defeated, or entitled). How can you transition the unhealthy discontent into something more positive?
  My area of healthy discontent is effectivnes and success. And the area of unhealthy discontent is sometimes my physical training.

What kind of dream?

“Always remember there are only two kinds of people in this world—the realists and the dreamers. The realists know where they’re going. The dreamers have already been there.” – Robert Orben

Though it is good to dream, it will remain only a dream unless he recognizes and persists through the things that get in the way of that dream becoming reality.

What is it that gets between me and my dream, my goal, my vision for my future?

The real dream, with hope of becoming reality, is focused on the actions, thoughts, goals, and disciplines it will take as part of the path to reach the dream. The mental energy involved with a daring dream is an energy of determination, assessment, planning, vision, follow-through, and passion.

Today, let’s begin to think about the things in our lives that get between us and our dream

• Exercise:
  Write down a dream that inspires and excites you. It could be something small, like a vacation or an achievement … or it could be something huge, like your purpose in life. Now think about that dream and see if your heart is right now more focused on daydreaming and wishful thinking, or if you are actively engaged with ideas and plans of how to see that dream become a reality.
  I am insired by idea that I can help pleople make their lives better by helping them be better persons and acomplish their goals

There are differences in life between those who achieve greatness and those who simply do not achieve anything that they feel is worthwhile with their lives.

Oftentimes we can get caught in a web of our own excuses.

Is it wealth?

There are many who come from poor and meager beginnings and still become successful.

Is it opportunity?

All of us are in the right place at the right time. The real question is: do we observe the right time? Do we find the courage to take action? Do we believe that we “deserve” the right time and the right place?

Is it moral excellence?

We all know seemingly successful people whose lives are not based on any sense of morality at all.

Does success have to do with an absence of hardships?

We have all heard story after story of people who have only made something great of their lives after being faced with tremendous pain. Then again, not every story is filled with life-shattering hardship either.

What is it that causes people to excel?
There is more power in asking this question than there is in answering it just yet.

• Exercise:
  What do you believe is necessary to move past mediocrity? Are there any characteristics of peak performers that are universal?
  For me there is no universal charasteristic. You have to have a dream and desire to achieve life you want to live. And also you have to change the way you think and take full responsilbilty for your own life.

For the most part, our growth comes step-by-step, ounce-by-ounce.

But sometimes we move to a new level of understanding all at once.

It’s one of the “aha” moment where everything we have been working so hard to understand suddenly comes into focus.

It’s all about a process of maturity and growth. As we commit to the process, we will experience the “aha” moments more and more.

• Exercise: What is an area of your life where you have committed to a process of growth, but you are ready to experience an “aha” moment?
  For me this area could be the attaining of the right attitude to day-to-day activities.

We cannot take control of our lives and live the kind of lives we are created to live if we do not realize that our decisions and reactions cannot be based on our emotions.
We must take charge of those emotions and understand that they are neither the healthiest nor the wisest determiners of our actions.

The question is: “am I reacting based on the way that I feel, or am I responding based on the truth?”

The better way to live life, then, is to realize that our emotions will change, but the decisions that we make need to be based more upon what we know to be the right thing rather than on the emotion of the moment.

Reacting is always more instinctive than responding.

• Exercise: What is one positive decision you can make today that you will refuse to allow any emotion to alter?
  I deliberately focus on how I make my decisions: reactively or based upon what I know to be right. My focus is on the gap between stimulus and my respond.

“Fear is the dark room where negatives are developed”.

If we allow negative experiences into the dark room of fear, then they develop into pictures that we accept into our visual narrative of reality.

Negative experiences will happen. That’s life.

However, if we purposefully focus our thinking on the good, positive, creative, and inspiring experiences of life, our minds become filled with light. And in the light … the negatives cannot be developed.

• Exercise: Write down 5 positive things that you can focus your thoughts on today.
  1. Awareness
  2. Positive attitude
  3. Healthy habits
  4. Good family relationship
  5. Personal development and growth

These are statements that are made about you.

The reality is that we can make affirmations for ourselves … and that’s about it.

When you begin to change, you create an environment that other people will respond to.

Statement written in the present, positive tense.

Something you want to become some time in the future, but rather something that you currently are.

The point is that you want to write them as if they are true today.

• Exercise: Write one affirmation about yourself here. Write it in the present, positive tense.
  I am deliberately focused on change for better self and on performing positive impact on the world

Most people in the world never take the time to decide what kind of person they want to be

If you don’t have a target to move towards in the area of personal growth, it becomes that much harder to find the motivation to move at all.

If you aren’t sure what you are doing or what to write, don’t worry— just begin the process.

• Exercise: Write 10 words here that describe the person you want to be. These adjectives will help you begin the longer process of a detailed description.
  What I did for myself is below:
  1. Leader
  2. Succsessful
  3. Kind
  4. Person of influence
  5. Visioner
  6. Resourceful
  7. Wise
  8. Mindfull
  9. Responsive
  10. Proactive