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| Keep Your Dreams Secret |
A great idea comes as an instant spark and an ignited mind try to shape it in steps. The moment the
spark comes to mind we tend to share it with friends and well-wishers. But, I will rather suggest holding
it in your heart and restraining from sharing it. In the early days, most of the ideas are very raw in form.
If you are going to share it with friends, it is likely they might react negatively. This is not because they
are jealous of your success, but might be due to their unfamiliarity of the idea and potential.
In some instances, your well-wishers might play like the devil’s advocate. If you are open to suggestions,
then this could be good for you as they will highlight problems you might face in due course. Knowing
about possibilities helps in planning in a better manner. So, it is all about your orientation and passion to
shape ideas into reality.
It is a fact that everyone is not equally gifted to have ideas and even if they have ideas they get carried
away by opinions before even giving it a try. One needs to have a very strong will power to pursue
dreams and shape it to make it real. In most cases, you will find dissonance between your idea and
understanding of the people because they fail to connect with your approach. Opinions coming out of
this dissonance will not be in sync with your thought process and it might influence you negatively. If the
opinion is coming from someone you admire, then this could be your biggest barrier between you and
your dream.
It is not just external influencing factors. The human mind is intrinsically conditioned to seek approvals
especially when the mind is dealing with some new ideas. It is very natural to have self-doubt and an
unknown sense of fear, but it is the will to overcome this fear that makes all the difference. If you want
to shape your dream then you have to get rid of the fear of failure, because there is no such thing as
failure in the path of success. The first and foremost thing you can do is to avoid such people who are
mines of negativity. They will do nothing but add weight to your fear. If that load goes beyond bearable
limits, you might stop pursuing your dream idea.
A 2009 psychological study conducted in New York University divided subjects into two groups to know
about the effect of idea-sharing on the outcome. The first group was allowed to interact and share ideas
with everyone they knew and the second group was not allowed to share goals and ideas with anyone.
To everyone’s surprise, the second group executed the task within time and the first failed to complete
it. The first group shared ideas with loved ones and this led to the creation of a false sense of
accomplishment. This false sense somehow acted as a cognitive barrier between the person and the
goal and they stopped the task in between.
The social approval from someone you admire or respect creates affirmation bias which makes you feel
like you are closer to achieving it but in reality, you are not doing anything. In psychological terminology,
it is called the intention-behavior gap, which is a disconnect between knowing what you should do and
your act in reality.
We all are differently wired, so the intensity of reaction might vary but it happens with everyone. Have
you ever shared your ideas with your friend and they have shown amazing enthusiasm and
encouragement? If yes, then you might have noticed the weakening of your excitement to purse the
dream idea. There is nothing wrong with it, because the mental gratification you get from social
approvals confuses your mind to differentiate between virtual and real.
The best possible way, as studies suggest, is to keep your ideas secret and start shaping it with
perfection. The step-by-step progression will train you and your mind to maintain a balance between
sharing and actualization. Let your success be the talking point.
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