Living a life of intention and realizing your dreams is far more challenging than it sometimes sounds and overcoming the obstacles can be overwhelming. And that can be why many of us don’t end up living the life of our dreams.

Why do people sit day dreaming instead of taking action and living their dreams? There are many excuses and reasons for not living your dreams, but there are also ways to move the excuses out of the way and move into action. Day dreaming is fun, but living your dreams is incredible.

One of the largest obstacles we can face is ourselves and our own friends and family. I do a lot of work with people about changing their own limiting beliefs, their own limiting paradigms and shifting their own inner dialogue. This is hard work to do and doesn’t happen overnight in most cases but it is doable when you are motivated and invested in making your dream a reality. You also have control to do the work or not. To change the negative things you say to yourself or not.

But what do you do when the negative attitude, negative beliefs are coming from outside: from our friends, family, co-workers, colleagues and others? How do you shift what you are hearing from them? This is a bigger challenge for many.

Some of the things you might hear are:
“You can’t do that”
“You’ll never make it on your own”
“You have to keep your job the market is bad and you’ll never get another if this business is a bust”
“We don’t have the resources”
“You’re not smart enough”
“My friends and family keep telling me it’s not feasible, that I’m crazy!”

Maybe you’ve heard other similar comments. These are challenging to overcome. It seems our friends and family would want us to be happy, successful, living the life we want. The ideal isn’t always the reality we are living with. Sometimes those that care the most about us aren’t the best support people. Sometimes they are what stands in our way of achieving our goals, dreams and aspirations.

If you are stopped cold by negative talk there are several things that you can do:

Share Your Dream, Share Your Vision
Share your compelling vision with them. Create a vision story that gives them all of the details, what will be happening when you realize your dream, how you will feel, why it will be good. Share your goals and be as clear as you can. Talk with your friends/family that aren’t supportive and let them know about your desire and passion for living the dream, for bringing it into your life. Tell them about how you see your life changing, and the positive outcomes you anticipate. And then, ask them for their support. Remind them that they care about you and your happiness and that their support means a great deal to you.

I call this having real conversations, speaking from a place of “I’, not defensive, not finger pointing. Okay, so you’re doing this great sharing and you’re working really hard to talk from “I” and your partner or significant other says “yeah, but what about us, me, the kids, the house, your commitments to us?” Great question. I like to actually say that, “great question”. What else would you say? “well, of course I’ve been thinking of all of that too....” Does your dream and vision cause you to abandon your life and leave it behind. That is a BIG decision and a BIG move. I certainly can’t answer that for you, but you do need to be thinking about the impact on your life and weighing what’s important to you. Can you balance it all? Can you include your partner, spouse, significant other?

Fear – Talking About Fear
Underlying our own obstacles and underlying those of our family or friends is often fear. Fear is an all powerful controller. I left the security of a well paying job to become an intern at an Outdoor Education Center. My friends and family were ultimately supportive, but there was also fear that could be heard in their voices, their comments. Are the objections you hear based in fear? This is another area that you can have very direct, real conversations with people. You can reinforce that you have thought through your plan, including the things that are scaring them. Let them know what you are doing to address those fears, and it might be nothing. For me, an important thing was talking about what was happening to me internally by not making the move, the unhappiness, the stress, the frustration, whatever it is you are feeling. When you live totally within your comfort zone everything remains static. When you step out of that comfort zone there is learning, there is movement in your life. There can be risk in moving your dream forward. Looking at that risk for yourself and being able and willing to share our thoughts about the risk, the fear can help others to feel more comfortable with your desires.

Create Support Outside of Your Circle
Form a mastermind group or support group that will support your new efforts. Meet with them in person or on the phone each month (at least) to report on how you are doing and what progress you have made. In a mastermind group each person will also report on their goals and their actions and you have the opportunity to support them as well. When I designed a cross country bicycle tour I asked several experienced touring cyclists to be on an advisory committee for me. They reviewed my route, my plan, my overall goal. They pointed out some key mistakes that I was making and not aware of. They also brought additional resources to the table with contacts across the country and experience. It was well worth it to have them work with me. I found that it also kept me on track, because I knew they were coming and that I had to have some work done to make it worth their time and effort.

Reach beyond your typical circle and gather support from outside your circle. In developing my business I have worked with people via telephone across the country in a mastermind type format. We each help each other in building our businesses.

Build Positive Support for Yourself
Positive affirmations are great. But in dream making I have found that it is powerful to stay in the flow of the dream, the energy of the dream by creating a CD with my vision story on it. It’s written in the present, as if it is happening now. Building a vision story includes details, feelings, descriptions, as if you are painting a picture. When you read it or hear it you feel inspired, excited, motivated. When you are faced with negative obstacles, creating a positive story that you can read and listen to regularly re-energizes you.

Overcoming obstacles in dream making is often much of the work that you need to do in realizing your dreams. Tapping into the positive energy that you gain from the steps you take forward is important in staying on your path. Be proactive in taking care of yourself and in communicating with your circle of friends and family. They can become your resources and allies. Be real, be open, honest and direct.

Author's Bio: 

Donna Price is a Success Coach, author of “Launching Your Dream” and “Bizology.Biz – The Science of Business Success”. As a Success Coach, Donna works with individuals and groups on personal development and success focus. To pick up your Entrepreneur’s Resource Guide go to: resourcesforentrepreneurs.com

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