Help! I am Living Someone Else's Dream

Don’t wander around hoping to please other people who will never be happy.

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Greg is a man in trouble with where he is right now. He is frustrated and not sure where to go. Drinking a little too much every night is the only way he can get to sleep. Working long hours is his normal routine. Greg has even thought about suicide as a way out. Decisions he made a long time ago have affected his life. He wanted to be a man who accomplished goals and be successful. Now he was starting to think about what makes a successful man today.

Greg is the type of guy who likes to win; he is very competitive.

This is a real case of “don’t judge a book by its cover.” If I showed you Greg’s nice house and sports car he drives to work, you might say, “how can that be rough?” He has created what he thought would be a dream and has become his nightmare. Behind the walls of his home, Greg is a verbally abusive father and uses fear to motivate his family. He has built something that he is having trouble sustaining.

At work, most of the partners in Greg’s firm can’t stand him. He is quite bristly to work with and expects everything to be done right now. As a partner in a major law firm, Greg likes to push his weight around with everyone he works with. Greg saw his father treat people this way at the small sales office he ran. His dad would bully people to get what he wanted.

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Competitive

Greg is the type of guy who likes to win; he is very competitive. In high school, he was so driven to be a great wrestler he was twice admitted to the hospital for passing out in a sauna trying to make weight. Greg’s father would drive him to school early to lift weights and train. He thought it was worthwhile when he won a state championship.

Smart

Academics was something Greg pushed hard on as well. Some people thought he was a “dumb jock,” but that only made him study more. He made the honor roll and National Honor Society, too. These study habits carried through as he excelled academically at college too. He thought this work was worthwhile when he was accepted to an Ivy League law school.

Hard Driving

Greg continued to work hard in law school. He was a man on a mission and studied constantly. He got married during law school and didn’t take time off for a honeymoon. Greg almost missed the birth of his first child as he was preparing for the bar exam. He did pass the bar exam on his first try, but he wasn’t sure if it was all worthwhile.

Whose dream is this?

Greg slowly began to wake up to the realization that he was living someone else’s dream. He ran into an old friend that he used to live by. They began talking about all the fun they had as kids. How they use to play together and ride bikes around the old neighborhood. Those times were more relaxed and fun.

He confided in his friend, “I have been very successful at living my father’s dream.”

His friend brought up the fact of how much fun they had before he began wrestling in high school. After that, they both went their separate ways. Greg liked wrestling, but his father loved it and pushed him to work on it more and more. Then it became all-consuming, and he spent all his time with wrestling and school with no time for friends and fun. He began to wonder if it was all worthwhile. He confided in his friend, “I have been very successful at living my father’s dream.”

Pushed in this Direction

Starting from an early age Greg’s parents pushed him. His father had not completed college and always wanted to be a lawyer. His dad laid a lot of blame on Greg as he had to drop out of college when Greg was born. He let this unhealthy parenting make his life decisions be guided by what his father wanted. He started to see his father was a bully. And he bullied him to choose a path his father wanted.

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Realization

Make sure the dream your living is yours. Too many people get pushed in the wrong direction by family and friends. We need to ask ourselves if this dream is what we want and if it is worth living. Greg went far into this so called dream before he realized it wasn’t for him.

Who is pushing you? Do you have someone who is pushing you? In Greg’s case, his parent’s were trying to vicariously live their dreams through him. You only have one life make it yours! Don’t wander around hoping to please other people or you will never be happy.

Are your dreams your own?

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Photo: Flickr/ Tomas Hellberg