While this article is not about 50 Shades of Grey it is about an internal battle you’ll face on your dream journey. A battle that starts the day you start using the gifts God gave you…

I’ve learned that using your gifts is awesome! Yet there is a side-effect. Using your gifts can create an addictive confidence that is like a wild animal. It feeds on validation, praise and accolades.

Without regulation that confidence can lead you to develop a blind obsession with your dream. You eat, sleep and breath your dream. It’s all you think about until claiming your dream becomes your dream. And the dream itself – well that sadly becomes immaterial.

Ughhh! There’s that type A drive again where we get things done to get them done. Aren’t these the same tendencies that drove you and I to leave the rat race and start claiming our dreams in the first place?

Ironically, in our careers this was called being a workaholic yet when we chase a dream with the same level of blind obsession, we call it tenacity. So what do we do when we find ourselves becoming obsessed with our dream?

My own response was to think that if I just pushed more; if I just worked harder that I would claim my dream. I mean I’m gifted right? I’m unique right? I’m a child of God and this is what I was meant to do. It should work? I should get what I want?

And that’s the part I just couldn’t ignore when my first business didn’t take off…all my hard work wasn’t working. I was no where closer to claiming my dreams. I felt like I was climbing up a mountain during an avalanche. All of the boulders falling down around me were my relationships; my health due etc. due to my one track mind…

I learned that a dream is not a thing to conquer, it’s a part of your soul…

To tame the wild animal of blind obsession you need something that most of us wouldn’t define as powerful – you need humility. Humility is not a lack of confidence it’s about knowing who you are and your purpose. It’s being committed to never forgetting where you’ve come from, the things you’ve overcome and your lowest lows. It’s embracing your humanness and being content with where you are on your dream journey and deciding not to let an obsession drive you. It’s deciding to do the hard work on yourself to uncover your true motives. That takes courage. And in that truth, of who you are, you will find the inward power to claim your dreams.

What will you do today to take the blinders off and come face to face with your own blind obsession?

Copyright 2015, Mary R Miller