How Important are Your Dreams? — A Half Year Reflection
6 months in 2024 have passed. There are many events that happen in my life which definitely make me reflect on many things, especially about life — more specifically on how do I live my life in this first semester, is it in accordance with what I dream of or not.
In hindsight, I feel that there are many milestones that have occurred in my life from various aspects, and they are worth being proud of and celebrating as a form of gratitude.
Nevertheless, I also realize that there are many things that make me go a little backwards and off track from what I have built and will build for the future that I feel in the first 6 months of 2024.
In retrospect, I am very grateful due to the activities that went smoothly this first semester of the year. And it is certainly Allah’s plan and role who blessed and destined me to be like this. I thank God. I really thank Allah for this, Alhamdulillah.
However, the core problem lies precisely in this. The problem is within myself.
With the ease that I got and I am very grateful for, as I reflected on myself, I felt that I was actually wasting it and was enmeshed in the situation by being carried away on temporary pleasures, which made me go off track and even far from my goals I need to achieve.
There are many things that I really lost track of, starting from neglecting and even abandoning habits that I have built for a long time, to putting aside my big goals that I have planned for things that are actually not that important. It’s all because my weak self-control recently.
From here I learned that maintaining a habit is indeed more difficult and harder than when we built it. I also learned that strong self-control is very important owing to the fact that temporary pleasures are always everywhere in our lives and can easily destroy our goals.
Self-reflection that I have been contemplating for the past 2 weeks or so has brought me to the question;
How will I run my life in the next 6 months according to what I want, what I need to reach, what I’ve planned, and what I dream of? How can I achieve my goals that I have outlined for the future?
I tried to break the question above down into the core and reason for on or off track my life was that I have lived so far:
Why is my goals very important in my life? How important are my goals that I dream of and want to achieve in my life?
Because, how strong your efforts are is a reflection of how important those goals are in your life.
There are 2 points that I got in the first 6 months of 2024 in my life:
1. Rejecting or saying no is one of the things that represents our strength of self-control
When we reject things that are inappropriate and not in line with our goals or our principles, it indicates that we are focused on goals we want to achieve. Being a people pleaser is one of the traits that can hinder us from achieving our dreams.
2. Don’t ever make an excuse for what you want to achieve.
Just. don’t. Once you allow yourself to make excuses for not doing things that lead to your goals, you will take everything for granted, which leads to questioning and doubting your dreams, procrastination, or even quitting.
Progressing means there are many things you have to sacrifice. It could be time, energy, money, even friends. Make sure you are ready for that. Or whether you are ready or not, you really have to and absolutely will experience it. Your daily free time that you usually use to hanging out with friends, binge-watching on Netflix, or scrolling through social media will be replaced if you decide and choose to level up. And that’s absolutely the price you have to pay.
There are only two choices:
You just do it because you choose to stay in your comfort zone
or
You choose to challenge yourself and live a somewhat arduous life but get the fulfillment because of the development that is within you
From now on, I promise myself to regain and redirect my life back on track to things that lead to my main goals. I also continuously learned to hold on and to always put my dreams as my top priority.
As Celine Dion said in her lyrics;
When you want it the most, there’s no easy way out.
When you’re ready to go, and your heart’s left in doubt.
Don’t give up on your faith, love comes to those who believe it.
And that’s the way it is
If your dream isn’t enough to make you goosebumps when you imagine it, isn’t enough to make you afraid, isn’t enough to slap you and your reality, isn’t enough to make you stressed and overthink, your dreams are not only ‘not that big’, but also ‘not that important’ for you to achieve.
Hopefully all of these paths will be smooth. I believe that Allah will always be by my side every step of the way. All I can do is just believe in myself, think and do positively, focus on my goals, and carry on.
