ARE YOU SURROUNDED BY A DREAM STEALER?
HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE
 A frustrated blue-collar father kicked around by his boss comes home to his seven-year-old boy. After years of trying to get ahead and falling short, the father arrives at the conclusion that only the rich and well connected can get ahead in life. In a moment of imagination, the young boy runs to his father exclaiming his excitement in desiring to be a big news reporter when he grows up just like the man he saw on television. The father shouts, “Stop dreaming, boy! You’re going to grow up to be nothing, just like me.”
One by one, dreams are stolen through people who project their own pain and frustrations onto the ears and lives of others. People who are dream stealers live as land dwellers, only seeing what is in front of them. Often they will wait until a dreamer or visionary paves the way so they call walk a road that someone has prepared.
People who are dream stealers are easy to identify. Usually they are the ones blaming everyone and Santa Claus as to why their life is not working and they are not able to have a wonderful future of possibilities. They are often dissatisfied with their own lives and find it easier to be a stumbling block for someone instead of finding ways to improve their own.
People who are dream stealers watch others succeed while they live vicariously through the dreamer’s life or complain about how they would have accomplished or done things differently. It is much easier to sit on the sidelines watching an Oprah Winfrey or a Bill Gates and making opinions about their actions than it is to become an Oprah Winfrey or Bill Gates in their own right in whatever shape that takes.
They see through the limited eyes of the obtainable and only trust in what they believe they can control. If a risk is required, they choose safety. If trust is required, they choose control. If imagination is required, they choose what is common and known. If hope is required, they choose to settle. Their world is often limited because their hope is also limited.
People who are dream stealers are not bad people or even mean people. They are simply limited in their view of what is possible and in turn impose that limitation on others. Often they are not dream stealers because they intend to be but because they are hurt in some way. Their hurt in turn hurts others. This does not justify their actions but offers understanding.
These dream stealers can be vicious and intentional in causing hurt or they can be completely oblivious to the words or actions they use. They can shout words predicting the impotent future of someone or give gentle words of opinion believing it is in the best interest of another.
I will never forget the calm words of a pastor who told me I was damaged goods and God would never use me because of my past of abuse and other issues. I truly believe that in his mind he offered those words as his version of help in telling me to be realistic due to my limitations. Unknowingly, that pastor’s words were dream stealers.
That pastor unknowingly acted as a dream stealer in my life until I stole my dreams back. Instead of being a curse and a dream stealer, his words, in part, have helped me to author two books regarding damaged goods, speak to audiences nationally, and created a passion to help people Dream Madly.
Regardless of the people who act as dream stealers in our lives, the choice always remains with us as to whether we will allow them to stop or hinder our dreams. All too often, we allow them consciously and subconsciously to thwart dreams, desires, goals and movement toward a life that matters. The link is that none of them has any power outside of what we give them despite the strong feelings, emotions, and beliefs we have attached to them.
You can do this!
*Taken from “Dream Madly, Pursue Wildly, Trust Completely” available at www.charlottehunt.com
Take care
Charlotte
Dream Madly, Pursue Wildly, Trust Completely
www.charlottehunt.com
Copyright © 2020 by Charlotte D. Hunt All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, or otherwise without written permission from the author except for brief quotations in printed reviews.