 Welcome to today's podcast. Thanks for being here with me again. Today I'm going to be speaking about five dream killers. These have been kind of my go-to dream killers, I think throughout my life, and very common in other people's lives. These common self-sabotaging ways that we weaken, disable and even destroy our own dreams. And I've looked back over my life and thought, well, these are the most common five for me. So I hope they will make sense to you as I talked to you about them in today's show. Whatever you are, let me know where you are listening or watching from, make a comment, tag me in. Please, I'd love to know where you are from and where this podcast you're reaching. If you don't subscribe, hit subscribe and get involved in the podcast on a regular basis. Appreciate you all being here. Enjoy five dream killers to watch out for. Thank you. These have tracked with me through my life and so you'll have your own, some of these may be yours, some others you could add, but I think it's probably good thing for me to chip these into your journey because we have this amazing tendency, don't be as humans to self-sabotage. It's my dream, I'll sabotage if I want to. And that's what we do in our lives and to each other's dreams. And so I thought it'd be good for us to take a little bit of time and share with you some of my dream killers and for you to keep an eye on these in your life and your journey in the years ahead. Hope you've got great dreams, that's a good thing, but they're easier to kill than they are to dream. So I want to give you a little bit of a heads up and prep and warning about any of these that may be in your life. Number one, sharing with the wrong person too soon will kill your dream in a heartbeat. I have done that so many times. I reminded of Joseph, of course, in scripture that shared his dream at a 17 year old with his brothers, not knowing that the implications of sharing with them was not good because the dream implicated him as above them in charge of them and it kind of didn't go well. So I think I want to encourage you guys to be careful to keep your dream a secret until it's less fragile. Until it's beyond the first draft. Until it is less brittle and you are less sensitive about people's response to it because when you share your dream at the beginning, we're really looking for validation, aren't we? And agreement and approval and high fives and encouragement and support. And if we share our dream too early and we don't get that, the negative response doesn't validate us, doesn't strengthen us, doesn't support us and we then start to question the dream and the dream was great. So to share your dream too early with the wrong people makes you question the dream and the dream never lives. And this is why so many entrepreneurial ventures never last beyond the first few years because I think we did a version of this with our entrepreneurial ideas. These things were kind of strangled at birth and never got to breathe because we shared them with the wrong people too soon. You know, I get that it's exciting. I get that it's exciting to have your dream, to have this thing that's exciting you. So in our excitement, we share it, but you must restrain your excitement around certain people who do not understand what this dream means to you. Have not remembered what it was like for their dreams to be strangled and killed and poured cold water on. They don't remember that. So they don't bring that remembrance and the grace they should have learned from that to your dream. They just respond negatively, questioning. Who you, I don't think so. This isn't the right time. You've tried something like this before. I once tried that it was a disaster. It'll never happen. It'll never get off the ground. You're too young, you're too old, you don't have the money, you're not educated enough. You're from the wrong background, wrong stage of life. Whatever it may be that people say or don't say, but say it with a look. And so we get hugely discouraged because the text didn't come. The check didn't come. The callback didn't come. The speaking up for you endorsing it didn't come. The repost didn't come. Whatever it may be that they promised you or you hoped it would happen didn't come. So be careful who you share your dream with. You know, not sharing your dream with people even close to you, which is sometimes the worst people to tell it to. Is not you been rude or unhealthily secretive or not trusting? It is a boundary. Sharing a dream when you want to is a boundary and boundaries are for you. They are not for them, they are for you. So never be afraid or feel to justify the fact that you didn't want to share it because you waited till you were ready. And people are gonna say to you, what? You should have told me about this months ago, them not knowing that you chose not to. Didn't, it's not that you forgot, you didn't want to because you knew or you feared if you told them about it before you had several months under your belt of awareness about your dream or momentum around your dream of support towards your dream, you knew that you would have risked giving it up because their opinion mattered too much to you back then. Some people's opinion guys matters far too much to us. And those are the people especially that we shouldn't say anything to in the early stages of our dream. You know, when I was a kid, I was about 15 years of age in my education back then, you know, the way schools operated then at 15, 16 or so, you went and sat down with the careers advisor. This guy came into school and we all came through like a production line sitting with the careers guy and he asked you and asked me, what do you want to do for a job? And I said, I want to be a fighter pilot. And he's leaned back in his seat and smiled smugly as if to say, get real. People at this level of education, which I went to in our country don't have that as an option, is what his smile said to me. Then he leaned forward and said to me, what does your dad do? Meaning, whatever your dad does is the limit of your potential. It was the day and age of apprenticeships. So the idea was, you know, your dad should get your job in what he does. And he said to me, what does your dad do? And I saw inside, resented his reply to my dream that I just trusted him with. Want to be a fighter pilot. Instead of saying, great, let me help you to do that. Here's what you need to do to get that job kind of thing. He didn't say that. He smiled, dismissed it and said, what does your dad do? Boom, brought me back down to earth with a huge reality check. He thought I needed, but I did not. I need somebody to believe in me, believe in my dream. I hardly believed in it myself. He said, what does your dad do? And I said, my dad is a serial killer. I did. I said, my dad's a serial killer. It was my way of saying to hell with you, I am not going to play this game of a script that you've come to me with that's killed everybody that sat with you before I got here and it will kill everybody after I come. So maybe in your day, I could give you a shock response to break you out of your script mentality that you were brought to us at this school. When you're going to ask us all in various ways, what does your dad do? Which is going to kill our dreams. So when he said, when I said, he's a serial killer, he said, excuse me, what did you say young man? I thought, yes, you'll never forget me in a hurry. Though I will forget him in a hurry apart from the benefit of this story. So I think that's why the Bible says, don't despise the day of small beginnings because small beginnings are fragile, they are weak and they are very despisable. So be careful who you tell it to because any response that looks like a despising will shut you down. So number one, way to kill your dream, tell it to the wrong person too soon. And you kind of know who the wrong people are, don't you? All right, number two, give me some thumbs up or whatever to let me know, you're all okay and you're staying with me and you still enjoying the party. I don't know where you are, whether it's a time of day if you have a drink in your hand, I don't know if that helps, but go for it. Mistaking the dream for a plan is the next way you kill your dream. If you mistake your dream for your plan, you're in trouble, it will never survive. Your dream will never see the light of day. What I mean by that is, I think we think excitement, enthusiasm, feeling inspired is a plan just because you feel it so deeply and you are so clear about it because especially if you are in the church world, if some of you are in that world like I've been for many years, especially if you bolt onto the dream when you tell it, God told me this, that you're in real trouble. You know, God told me, I had a dream angels river danced on my duvet and revealed this dream to me. So once you start saying, God gave me this dream, it really starts to take on this attachment you have to it that you feel if God told you, it's as good as done. It's a done deal, isn't it? If God told you, it's a done deal, I think is what we feel. So we think that because all of that is involved in the dream for us, that that is as good as it happening. And we kind of sit back and just wait for it to happen. Especially when people say, great, high five, that's awesome, that's amazing, that's wonderful. I'm so thrilled for you. And we get around that crowd that all jump in with these encouragements but nothing is happening yet, nothing will happen until your dream finds a plan. Listen, clarity about your dream is not a plan. Just because you can articulate it so clearly doesn't mean it's gonna go anywhere. You know, we have often taught going back to Joseph again, you know, from a biblical example of his dream. You know what got Joseph in charge of Egypt? I've said this for many years, but nobody listens because we're still preaching the dream stuff from Joseph and staying there. What got Joseph in charge of Egypt was not his ability to dream and interpret dreams. It was his ability to go beyond that to figuring out a plan to make the dream come true or to avoid what the dream forecast in the case of Pharaoh's dream. And so when he interpreted Pharaoh's dream in front of Pharaoh's political and military cabinet, he went beyond just saying the dream means seven years of plenty, seven years of famine. And he said, I have an idea. And he suggested a 14 year economic plan which was let's in the plenty times, store up the excess. And in the fun in time, let's go into export of grain business will be billionaires. And Pharaoh said, I like this kid, put him in charge next to me. So you got to have a dream and a freaking plan. You may have a dream to lose weight. But you gotta have a plan, hey. You may have a dream to be out of debt but you gotta have a plan to stop spending what you don't have. You gotta have a dream to find a life partner but maybe you need to do a little bit of work on you to become more attractive to said potential life partner. You gotta have a dream to be healthier. That's good. You gotta have a plan. What you're gonna do to be healthier. So it's simple but it's profound guys. And you will derail and sabotage and kill your dream if you think the dream is as good as a plan. It's not. Hey guys, I'm excited to let you know about my brand new ebook called 100 Secrets of My Progress. It is my own personal book of proverbs if you like of insights, wisdom, things I've curated and gathered over decades. Some of which have been absolute lifesavers to me and I hope they will be to you. I've used the word secrets because they were. No one told me about them and I don't want these to be secrets anymore. I want you to know them and not have to go through some of the suffering I went through to figure these things out. So I hope you're gonna enjoy this new ebook. It's about personal development, leadership, relationships in the past few decades and I commend it to you highly. You can find more information at PaulScanlan.com forward slash 100 secrets and I hope you enjoy. Thank you. All right. Number three, unmanaged expectations. Hello, unmanaged expectations will kill your dream because your dream is going to need you to get real about what it's gonna require now in terms of time and resources, perhaps finance and all these things, not least of which will be the pain, what pain factor will the dream bring into your life? What inconvenience, what strain on your life and your family life and your health and your schedule, what is that? And to be very clear about that is a good way towards leaning into your plan head instead of the sort of dream heart, get your head involved in this heart dream. And I think managing expectations is a huge part of that. I think when you don't manage your expectations, the dream already has you in trouble because the first sign of resistance or failure or setback, if you didn't see that coming and anticipated, you have no contingency, you have no backup, you're not able to improvise and move around and through it because you didn't manage your expectations. You know, when Jesus said, if you're gonna war, if you're gonna go to war, you better sit down and figure out, have they got more troops than us? That kind of thing. Have they got more resources than us, better weaponry than us? But if you're gonna build a building or a great project, sit down and figure out, can we afford it? It's that, and so many of us don't do that. We just run with the dream and we don't manage our expectations. You know, managing expectations has been one of my greatest life discoveries because as I've said many times, if you don't manage your expectations, you will manage your disappointments. So you might as well be proactive in managing the front end of that instead of the back end of that, which is disappointments because people let you down, cost to let you down, expect them to let you down and when they do, you'll be cool because you saw it coming a mile off. All right, number four, not becoming who your dream requires you to be will kill your dream. Not becoming who your dream requires you to be. Every dream, vision, calling, goal, big idea, whatever you call it, needs you to upgrade, you. Needs you to grow up, needs you to learn some new skills. Needs you to work on your internal world, needs you to become more patient, kinder, smarter, more inclusive. Work on your ego, work on your anxiety and stress levels, work on your lifestyle habits. So every dream requires us to change and grow and adjust in our world, in ourselves internally, mentally. Every dream will require you to adjust relationally. Some people can't be included in your dream and you need to step away from certain relationships, certain energies these people bring to your life that you just can't afford the luxury of anymore once you step into getting serious about making your dream become a reality. So not becoming who your dream needs you to be. So the dream is bigger than you. And if the dream is bigger than you, then your dream will intimidate you and it will taunt you and it will irritate and aggravate you because your dream is constantly ahead of and bigger than you. And what we have to do is we have to grow to the size our dream requires us to be. So the dream doesn't find us lacking on a certain day at a certain time when your dream really needs you to be fully present, in shape, ready, aware and in all that work and opportunity comes, a phone call comes, a door opens and you ain't ready. So the dream was where you wanted it to be but you weren't where you should have been. So you have to say, what is this dream gonna ask of me and can I pay that price? Can I pay the paying threshold price? Because the dream doesn't take us out. The vision, the goal doesn't take us out. It's the pain that comes with it that we didn't see coming and no one warned us about. So there's a lot of pain that we have to go through to become the best version of us for that dream to become a reality. So that's number four. Not building strategic alliances is my fifth dream killer. Not building strategic alliances. You're going to need people and different people to pull off your dream, your big idea. And if you don't build those strategic alliances, then your dream will not come to pass. The very nature of many of our dreams requires help and it's help we don't have and don't know where to get it from but that help will find you if you give off the energy and give off the openness and humility that I need help. I've talked for many years as some of you know that your resources are in your relationships. They're everything you need, someone's God. But if you don't know who the someone is, you'll go without it. So if you will build a relationship rich life, you'll never be short of resources because someone always has what you need even if it's a phone number of someone. That you could never access that they wouldn't give you the time of day. They don't care about you but they care about someone you know. And that someone you know puts a word in for you, opens a door for you and there you go. You're to the next level of your dream because the resource you didn't have that was putting a ceiling on your dream, you now get access to not because you had it or knew where to find it but because you knew someone that knew what you didn't know someone that had what you didn't have. So not building strategic alliances, not building relationships that are resource rich will also kill your dream. That's why I've taught this many years now from the two kings fought in the Bible, the widow's oil where she only had a bit of oil left and said to the prophet Elijah, I have, she said to Elijah, I don't have enough, my son's gonna be taken into, he's gonna be taken in and sold in those days they didn't repossess the TV and the couch and the car they took the kids, which on a bad day some of you wouldn't mind. So they come in to take the children and sell them because she couldn't pay her debts. And she said, what do you have in the house? And she said a bit of oil and he said, here's an idea, here's what you should do go to your neighbors and ask, not for a few vessels, get as many as you can when the oil starts flowing, it'll fill every vessel you can beg, steal and borrow. In other words, her miracle was in her relationships because if she'd gone to neighbors houses down the road asking for vessels and locked at the door and the first neighbor that saw her thought, I'm sorry, you've been a terrible neighbor. I don't like you. You've been awful to be around in this neighborhood. You've been one of these finger wagging Christians that live around here. You've always disapproved of me and my lifestyle because I'm gay or I'm Muslim or I'm different politics to you or I'm whatever you don't approve of. And if this person who was part of Elijah's School of Profits Families had had a bad reputation in the neighborhood, on the day they needed relationship collateral, they would have had none. So the miracle that day was not just in the supernatural oil that didn't run out, but it was very much governed by how many vessels she could find, which was very much determined by her relationships in the neighborhood. So her resources were in her relationships and so are yours. All right, those are my five dream killers. Hope that helps you make sense to you guys. You'll have some of your own. Keep adding to those, keep an eye on them because we want your dreams to come to pass. And so many don't for no reason other than these things. There was nothing wrong with the dream. In fact, one of the biggest frustrations in life is seeing someone else pull off your idea. Someone else ran with your dream. You think, I was gonna do that. Yeah, maybe because they saw these things, I didn't let them shut them down. All right, hey guys, I'm excited to let you know about my brand new ebook called 100 Secrets of My Progress. It is my own personal book of proverbs, if you like, of insights, wisdom, things I've curated and gathered over decades, some of which have been absolute lifesavers to me and I hope they will be to you. I've used the word secrets because they were, no one told me about them and I don't want these to be secrets anymore. I want you to know them and not have to go through some of the suffering I went through to figure these things out. So I hope you're gonna enjoy this new ebook. It's about personal development, leadership, relationships in the past few decades and I commend it to you highly. You can find more information at PaulScanlan.com forward slash 100 secrets and I hope you enjoy. Thank you.