 When you look at social media, everything looks great about going after your dream life, right? You see the people going on these amazing trips to Thailand with their brand new cameras and drones living it up. You see these new couples that have fallen in love and they go on these picturesque Paris and European vacations. Or maybe it's just day to day where you just want to take an afternoon off to do exactly what you want in your life. And this is what living the dream looks like. But in reality there are a lot of downsides too that I don't think a lot of people talk about. So in this video I thought I would share five very realistic things that are difficult that come up when you become someone who goes after their dreams. What's up you guys? Alex Hein, author of the book Milk the Pigeon, a field guide for anyone lost in their 20s. I've included a free link down below this video which is a free journaling worksheet to help you get your life together and plan out the most awesome life imaginable. So it is the first link below this video. So the first thing that I think really crops up pretty soon is that if you want something other than the average status quo life it actually becomes a little bit unrelatable to other people. Because I mean if you know that you don't want the average nine to five and you don't want the average relationship and you don't want the average health well then how do you relate to all these people around you that may have those things? At the beginning of my journey you know I had the same conversation that was really pretty frustrating to me. I had all these people just be like you know Alex why can't you just be happy with this nine to five job and just not be so ambitious and just do what your boss says and just not want that much out of life. Why do you have to have like this one in a million girl? Why do you have to write a book and just be content with your blog? You know I had these conversations a lot with people and they really made me angry and it just made me illustrate to myself that one of the prices of going after an unusual life is that on some level you can't relate to the average person that just wants to clock in and clock out of their job go drink every night at 5 p.m. and go home and watch TV. It's just not relatable. The second thing is that ironically the more you do the more you'll be criticized. So you would think that you're more likely to be criticized for just being someone who's sitting on the couch all day and drinking beer eating pizza and watching TV but I'm talking about the criticism that comes from envy. You know I was reading this credo from a physician throughout history and this ancient doctor said that in one of the lines of his personal manifesto he said the more you do the more you'll be criticized and I thought this was so weird. I mean his manifesto was like this inspirational like be an ethical virtuous doctor and go out of your way for your patients but the second or third line was the more you do the greater you become the more you'll be criticized. Now that could be you're a student in high school who's putting in extra hours because you really want to get into medical school and help your family. It could be that you're an athlete and you want to put in the extra work because you want to go to the nationals or to the olympics or it could just be that guess what you're a single mother and you want to work two or three jobs so that you have enough money to pay the bills and actually take a vacation and the sad truth is a lot of people are going to criticize you just for doing more than the average person and that's something you have to be okay with. The third thing that people don't like hearing is that luck is a real factor. You know I think about luck in the way I think about Bill Gates's story where he was born into a family that had the means and the opportunity to have some of the first access to computers in the whole country. Now maybe Bill Gates would have been a generic millionaire anyway with his skills or his intellect or whatever but the very chance fact that he had access to computers that he could go use every day that fueled his obsession and interesting computers and savvy with it was pure luck. You could also look at Einstein's biography where he had this mentor Max Talmud eat with his family regularly because he spotted the brilliance of this young child that's also pure luck or maybe it's like Andre Agassi whose father wanted to be an olympic tennis player and he didn't make it so from the time little Andre Agassi could walk his father had a tennis court built into the backyard so that his son could hit a million balls a year from the time he was walking he was playing tennis now that is the definition of pure luck but it doesn't mean that you just give up because luck is not on your side it just means some people have it easier than others and some are born halfway up the mountain and some are born all the way at the bottom and that's just the way it is and you just do the best that you can. The fourth thing is that if you want that unusual life you have to do what the average person is not willing to do and most people just are not willing to do that you know a few stories that come to mind are a girl that I did it for a long time was Filipino and she told me the story of what it took her parents to get her kids and her family to the United States now her mom was a nurse who first went from the Philippines alone to Saudi Arabia for several years because she could earn a higher salary to then send money back home so she went to Saudi Arabia for several years alone and then moved to the United States again alone lived in Florida alone for years then moved to Connecticut alone for years and sent the money back and all in all totaling this journey around the world for her family it was something like 10 years she spent alone just working going home alone working going home alone and sending that money back so that her kids and her husband could eventually come to the US for a better life now that is an extreme sacrifice and most people are not willing to do that and sometimes that is what it really takes to produce a better life where you don't like the journey in the short run obviously if you can it's better too but sometimes that's just not an option now the last thing the brutal truth about going after your dreams is that you can try your best and still actually fail you know we're so inundated with these messages of you know snapchat zero to a billion dollars in three years or whatever it was or these just ridiculous startup unicorn stories or even at the lower level six months and six figures these things that don't happen for most successful people but it gives the illusion that if you haven't done it in that period of time you're an idiot or it's never gonna happen and that's just not true you know i started a business in my early 20s with a friend and it was basically like one of these fun quizzes on where should i go next in the world and it was like millennial buzzfeed mixed with like crude jokes it was like the perfect thing for me and so we built this project we were building the database of questions and my friend was living in russia and he had half of the business projects half the business data and he had a party at his house and somebody sat on his laptop broke it and he lost all the data now we were sure we had this home run business we were going to be able to quit our jobs and and just do something that we were more passionate about but that never ended up happening and that friendship really never even continued past that year so the reality is that you can try your hardest and still never become that professional athlete you can try your artist and still not get into medical school and then have this existential crisis of faith you can think that religion or the seminary is your dream or being in medicine is but then a year in you're like oh i don't think this is the right thing for me you can try your best and still fail in the short run but it doesn't mean that you just give up on the big dream it just means you have to trust that that redirection now is more data that you can use to make the next best decision all right you guys i thought i would give i mean you know me i'm real talk i'm all about digging up that subconscious the darkness the uncomfortable conversations i hate the fluffy unicorn bs because that's not life there are a lot of tragedies in life as well remember just because you might be failing right now this can be the worst year of your life and the next year could literally be the best year ever of your life so don't forget that these are five brutal truths that i share that you're prepared for and they don't discourage you they're hurdles but they don't become permanent roadblocks that stop you on your quest all right you guys so again keep in mind that first link below this video is for a free journaling pdf to help you figure out what your dream life is and how to actually make that a reality and then before you go i have two related videos on this topic here