Dealing with dream killers at home&work place (1)

The typical working woman who wants to make a great mark in her business and career does not climb the career ladder without being interrupted with all manners of people, obstacles and challenges. In Africa, the situation is even worse because culture made us to understand that our women should not be making waves in the career world so the women who dare raise up their heads high to accomplish their dreams in life have many obstacles to overcome both at home and their work place.  I have suddenly walked into some career women’s office and found them cried out their eyes out serectly just because of what they encounter from collegues and the society. These are women who are talented, intelligent charming and hard working and all they want is to make lives better for themsleves and people around them and changing the world for better but are faced with all kinds of obstacles. Some get fraustrated and fall by the way side thereby living a sad life all their lives.

I tend to disagree with people who always refer to the few prominent women in politics and Government each time we talk about women making waves in the career world. How can we use just ten or twenty women out of millions of women in a country to say that women have arrived careerwise. Everywoman must not be a politician, or Government official before she can be seen and said to be successful in her career.

There are thousands of educated women in this country who are bubbling with creativity, ideas, innovations but are fraustrated because they simply sit and fold their hands and most are probably afraid to express themselves. Among these group of women mostly have come across someone or people whom they confided their initiatives, ideas with but they were discouraged and laughed at. Majority of such women having been discouraged simply give up and allowed their dreams to go down the drains. If you are reading this column and this applies to you or you  have come across someone whose dreams were quenched by others, i would like to ask you these simple questions- – Though you were discouraged, do you still have those ideas crawling all over your head over and over? Are you really fulfilled with what you are doing presently? Are you even doing anything resourceful with yourself? When you thought about your ideas, were you genuinely convinced that they never made sense or too unrealistic to achieve? Let me know your thoughts because these can be a process to wake up your life dreams and be whom GOD has made you to be in life.

Let me tell you folks a short experience i had years back while i was in Lagos. I had this idea of helping out the grassroot women in my state in the area of creating awareness for early detection of breast Cancer. I do not have anyone with this disease in my family but having noticed how lots of women have died secretly and still die as we talk on breast cancer due to not going for early checkup, i decided to take this upon myself to organize a seminar to enlighten women on what to do. I spoke to a relative whom i was very close and very fond of then in Lagos about this idea and let me quote what he told me then- -‘Ohh…we all dream and have big dreams so i think, this is not for you actually…forget it because it is too huge for you . How would you go about this anyway? Just forget this please!’ Boy, was i discouraged?  I was dazed to hear such from him because being very close to him, i was filled with hopes of his approval. Did i feel bad?  Sure i did!  Did i cave in to his discouragement? Not in my life time…ever!!  Ever!! One of the things i check in people around who claimed to know me very well is when i come up with great ideas that can improve lives and affect humanity positively and such persons tell me i cannot pull it off. Once you tell me this , i wll say to my self..dude…this person does not even know who the hell i am afterall! If you want to get the best out of me when it comes to life activities, challenges, just tell me, what i planned to do is impossible. Nothing is impossible folks ..what most people claim to be impossibilities are periods of delay and time. There is time for everyone of us to shine and each individual’s destiny differs. If you believe in yourself and know exactly what you came into this life to do, even if it takes more years than you anticipated, it must surely happen for you.  So when someone tells me…jackie..you cannot do this, that is all i need to swing into action to achieve that dream, project whatever unless, i personally decided not to go ahead. To round up my story, at the end of the day, i continued with my breast cancer awareness project plan, made my contacts and, the Senator representing my constituency then was interested in using the seminar help the women in my state and boommmm…i went down to my state and had a great breast Cancer awareness seminar alongside another youth program. This was in 2005. Who says you can’t achieve your dreams?

We are going to talk about this dream killers in series because we have different kinds of dream killers and i want to take full space explaining them. Today we will look at family dream killers.

Now the dream killers in your family do not really hate you that much when they discourage you from pursuing a great vision of yours. They see their discouragement as some kind of advice and not spoiling your vision. The one person you told in your family could be the one whom you are also looking upon to help with finance and he/she is not willing. So to avoid getting you ask for capital to start your dreams, he/she will simply tell you, the idea will not fly. When this happens, always walk away politely and thank him/her for his/her opinion but keep your distance on discussing the topic further. There are also family dream killers which come in form of envy of you getting ahead than them. They feel they should be ahead of you so while support your dreams?  When you encounter such family members, it is very bitter to swallow.

Finally, an honest family member who has your greatness at heart, will simply find ways and talk to other people he/she can reach to help you achieve your visions rather than telling you, your idea is USELESS.

JACLYN IWU