“If you can determine what a man shall think, you never have to concern yourself with what he will do.” – Dr. Carter G Woodson

The following are five ways of how not to succeed or achieve your dreams, this post was entirely inspired by the interesting, humble, Brazilian, best selling author and passionate entrepreneur Bel Pesce.

Bel Pesce is also the founder of FazINOVA, a school that helps people of all ages achieve their dreams. She studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she got Majors in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Management Science, and got Minors in Economics and Mathematics. Furthermore, Bel was also named one of the “100 most influential people of Brazil” by Epoca Magazine.

After dedicating several years to understanding how people achieve their dreams, Bel sees a striking overlap between the dreams that we have and projects that never happen. So with no further delay, here are five things to believe if you don’t want to achieve your dreams…

Firstly : Believe in instant and overnight success.

We have all heard the story in one form or another about the well educated girl, guy or tech geek who started a business or built a mobile app and sold it very fast for a massive amount of money. The story is real, though there may be some omissions making it ultimately incomplete. If we were to investigate further, we may find that the girl or guy had several attempts at starting and building a business or had already created 17 apps before, and he or she has an advanced degree on the topic, or something equivalent well as that he or she has been working on the topic for 15 years.

This is really intriguinging, as Brazilian Entrpreneur Bel Pesce herself has a story in Brazil that people think was an overnight success. She comes from a humble family, and two weeks before the deadline to apply to MIT, she started the application process. And, tada-a ! She was accepted into MIT. People may think that’s an overnight success, but that only worked because for the 17 years prior to that, she took her life and her education seriously. The overnight success story or stories we hear are always a result of everything you’ve done in your life before that moment and not necessarily a sudden vein of good luck.

–Secondly: Believe someone else has the answers for you.

Constantly, people want to help out, right ? All sorts of people: your family, your friends, your business partners, and sometimes even people you may classify as strangers, they all have opinions on which path you should take: “And let me tell you, go bout things this way, use this service, you can’t do things that way.” But whenever you dig deep into the matter, several alternative paths may reveal themselves to you. You need to make the best informed decision for yourself and your situation. No one else has the perfect answers for your life and for what you want to achieve, you need to keep choosing which decisions are right for you and your circumstances. The choices are infinite for you and you may encounter some challenges and make some seemingly off / bad decisions though it’s a part of life it’s a part of the process.

Thirdly: Deciding to settle when growth is guaranteed.

So when progress is going great, business is going great, life is going great, you have put together a positively progressive prosperous team, growing your income, and everything is set… This is by no means time to settle.

When Bel released her first book, She worked really, really hard to distribute it throughout Brazil. With that, over three million people downloaded it, over 50,000 people bought physical copies. When she wrote a sequel, of course some effortless impact was guaranteed. Even if she was to do very little in terms of content or marketing, sales would be okay. “Though okay is never okay.”

When we are growing towards a peak, we need to work harder than ever and find ourselves another peak. In Bel’s case maybe if she didn’t do much in terms of raising her standards for her second book, a couple hundred thousand people would have read her book, and that’s great already. Though by focusing and working conscientiously she brought this number up to millions. And following that, that’s why she decided, her new book, to be distributed to every single state in Brazil. And now in her own words she can already see “…a higher peak. There’s no time to settle down.”

Tip number four, (and this is really important) : Believe the fault is someone else’s.

Constantly we see and hear people saying,”Yes, I had this great idea, but no investor had the vision to invest.” Or “Oh, I created this great product, but the market is so bad, the sales didn’t go well.” Or, “I can’t find good talent; my team is so below expectations.” If you have dreams now, It’s your responsibility, to make them happen. Yes, it may be hard to find a talented team. Yes, the market may be bad. Though if no one invested in your idea, if no one bought your product, for sure, there is something there that is your fault.

” You need to plan your dreams and make them happen. No one achieved their goals on their own. Though if you don’t make your dreams happen, it’s your fault and no one else’s. Be responsible for your dreams.” – Anon

And fifth but not least, (this one is really important as well) : Believe that the only thing that matters are the dreams themselves.

Bel Pesce once used a TV advertisement to illustrate this point, the advertisement features a group of friends, in motion actively climbing up a mountain, it was a very high mountain which was menacing in appearance, and it was a lot of work to climb. You could see that everybody in the group was sweating and this experience was teaming its toll on them. They were going up and up, higher and higher, and then… they finally made it to the top. At this point naturally, they decided to celebrate, “Yes ! We made it, we’re at the top!” They shouted in excitement… Two seconds later, one friend looked at the other and says, “Okay… let’s… go… down.”
Life, success or any achievement for that matter is never about the goals themselves. It is about the journey. Yes of course, you should enjoy the goals themselves, we all have dreams/goals/ targets, and whenever we get to reaching one of those goals we can sometimes assume, it’s a magical and enchanting place where we are engulfed in happiness forevermore. Though really achieving a dream achieving a goal, achieving a target is a momentary sensation, and clearly as you can see your life is not. So now it can be said if you really want to enjoy achieving all of your dreams, you fully need to enjoy every step of your journey.

Your journey is simple, it consists of different steps of varying difficulty. Some steps will be right on. Sometimes you will stumble. If it’s right on, celebrate, because commonly some people wait too long to celebrate and don’t acknowledge the power in celebrating. If you stumble, turn that experience into a learning experience.

“If every step becomes something to learn or something to celebrate, you will surely enjoy the journey.” – B. Pesce

A quick recap on five ways how NOT to succeed:

 Believe in overnight success

Believe someone else has the answers for you

 Believe that when growth is guaranteed, you     should settle down

Believe the fault is someone else’s

Lastly, Believe that only the goals themselves matter

Do all of the above and according to entrepreneur Bel Pesce “…you will destroy your dreams.”

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