The other day I heard the following:

You’re not waiting for your dreams to come true. Your dreams are waiting for YOU to come true.

At first blush, this sounds so strange. What does it even mean?

I thought about it for a while and soon, I became fascinated with the idea. It’s simple really…and yet, so powerful.

Here’s the way I see it:

Your dreams are out there, alive and well, waiting for you to do your part. They’re begging for you to step into your true potential—to be the best YOU you can be—to grab them with both hands and turn them into reality.

We have it backwards when we sit around waiting for our dreams. They’re far, far ahead of us. It’s our responsibility to reach out, into the darkness, and pull ourselves toward them—not the other way around. Our dreams beckon for us to become more than who we are today, to take action and live up to our highest calling.

Your dreams do exist; they are real. Let this give you comfort, but also motivation.

Your dreams are dancing in the future, just “killing time” you might say, waiting for you to become the person worthy of their gifts.

Do your part and go find them.

Be true to the highest and best version of yourself and your dreams will appear you will appear for your dreams.

Photo Credit: Nicole.Pierce.Photography (Flickr)

This article is the tenth in a 10-part series on the topic of overcoming career-limiting habits.

I have to admit: I was thrilled, though somewhat surprised, to see “risk aversion” show up on the list of top career-limiting habits a while back. It seems that risk often gets a bad rap in the workplace. But it’s an absolute necessity.

Here’s the hard truth of life: Anything that’s worthwhile is almost always a little risky. There are very few certainties in life that lead to greatness. Growth, success, accomplishment, love—these things require risk. They’re not guaranteed. In order to ever attain them, you have to step out on a limb.

Moving forward almost always means taking a leap of faith.

And I’m talking about faith in yourself.

I think the thing that really holds people back—in their career and in life—is that they don’t have that faith. They’re risk averse because somewhere along the line they stopped believing in themselves.

So they hide. They shrink back. They take the well-worn path, even when it doesn’t lead exactly where they want to go. They settle. Whether out of fear or simply laziness, they sacrifice what they could be and what they could do for what they know.

Risk aversion comes at a very high price, indeed.

That idea of sacrifice is pretty significant when it comes to risk. If you aren’t willing to sacrifice certainty, comfort and safety, you could end up losing so much more.

You sacrifice possibility. Is it worth it to you?

Risk aversion is, by its very nature, limiting—whether we’re talking about your career or anything else. When you’re able to stare risk in the eye and forge ahead, you experience limitless opportunity.

Yes, that includes the opportunity to fail.

But you know what? You’re okay with that. You’ll survive. A little failure never broke you. In fact, it only made you stronger.

So what’s there to be afraid of? What’s there to hide from?

Why settle when you have limitless possibility inside you? Don’t give that up. Don’t sacrifice what could be. Don’t let the world down.