This was on Pinterest and my first inclination was to pin it, but then I thought about it a little longer. There's a difference between dreams that are nice little fantasies and dreams that are passions. As an example, I've always dreamed of being an artist and sketching effortlessly. However this falls under the wistful fantasy category because I'm not willing to put in the effort or time it would take to improve.
On the other hand, writing is a passion. As many times as I walked away from it, I always returned and I was always willing to put in the work I needed to improve. Discouraging words? I guess rejections fall into this category. But even with rejections, I wasn't able to stop writing. I always came back to it.
So when I think about someone giving up a dream because of one discouraging word, I can't help but think that they must not have wanted that dream badly enough.
There's a really great video on YouTube called: The Last Lecture - Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. But the man speaking (Dr. Randy Pausch) said something really profound for me. "The walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."
So if one word can stop someone's dream, then I tend to believe it wasn't something they really wanted. That doesn't mean we should go around and stomp on someone's dreams, but it does mean that if someone says, "You'll never be a writer" that the answer should be, "Oh, yeah? Watch me." If the answer is, "he's right, I'll never be a writer" well, then that person was never meant to write because it's a tough, tough field for those who can't handle discouraging words.
