After reading a kerzillion blog posts by various bloggers around the place this year, I’ve become really sick of some of the formulas and themes that many of them use.
One formula I thoroughly detest is the inappropriate use of a list. Usually the post starts with a description of a problem you have (even if you don’t have this particular problem) and then proceeds with a way too long list on what you should do to solve it. I find these list posts akin to interfering people who search around looking for others they can wedge in on and share their advice with. Often the advice is meaningless, useless and if actually followed, can have downright dangerous consequences for the recipient.
This is why when scanning a blog post today from Free Pursuits I was pleasantly bowled over with what I believe anyway, a blog post should really be about. A straight up pointing out of the ‘elephant in the room’ or ‘the emperor with no clothes’. The post is by Ashley Ambirge and is a guest post for Free Pursuits as Ashley actually has her own blog called The Middle Finger Project.
The Dream Protection Plan, smart words to keep the Dream Zappers at bay
Ah,what a breathe of fesh air! How long have we all been captive to those folk who have no restraint in sharing their inappropriate views on our lives and our ideas? And, for once, while there is a short list in there, Ashley does not follow the ‘list post formula’. The post is called The Smart Ass Guide to Dealing with Dream Zappers.
There are quite a few gems in this post, but one that jumped straight off the page for me was Ashley’s countering of the usual trotted out argument by the well-meaning brigade when one of us dares complain about another person’s trashing or belittling of something that’s important to us – that we should not take it personally. Hang on, what’s this about, don’t take it personally? Life is personal. Being a human being is personal – there’s actually nothing ‘not personal’ about the way other people treat us and the way we respond to it – wake up, it’s all personal!
I remember many times in corporate and then later when David and I were hawking around the business plan for SeekCulture.com (which eventually evolved into the business – Arts Hub) when I would come up against a particularly obnoxious individual who saw it as their business to reform my whole life according to their world views and ideologies. Admittedly, these were usually much older folk and looking back now, I can see they were also the manifestly unsuccessful. The successful of their generation were busy getting on with the enormous workload they carried and bringing up their families – they certainly didn’t have time to go on the hunt to undermine and as Ashley Ambirge would say Dream Zap the next generation of workers, thinkers and managers.
But every now and then these Dream Zappers appeared in the guise of a generational contemporary. In our book, Niche Content Millionaire, David and I share bluntly one of the most undermining experiences we had in the very early days of the Arts Hub experience, when a couple of investment managers at a government-funded business incubator we’d (unfortunately) joined took us through a journey where they built us up to expect funding and then at the last minute revised their dialogue and expressed that we weren’t really investment-ready, or what they were looking for. Now, when you read Niche Content Millionaire you’ll find out that there was a rather devious hidden agenda going on here. But wait a minute, what sort of person feels they have the right to waste the time of another and through their actions or words, take a well-aimed zap at their dreams?
Not someone you want to know is my view!
As you can probably tell just writing about this topic of the underminers, belittlers, the Dream Zappers makes me seethe and is a reminder to me that in the last 5 to 6 years anyway, I’ve been incredibly fortunate in that I’ve been able to mainly avoid or just dump a Dream Zapper. Indeed this is even true of the extended family who at various times have all shown themselves to be really brilliant, highly accomplished Dream Zappers. A little distance and time not spent with them has resulted in more courteous and respectful relationships – the interference, undermining and shooting down has ceased, even if they all secretly still sit there thinking about how they can take us down a peg, the thing is no-one feels free to actually try do this anymore.
Ashley has a few interesting retorts to Dream Zapper comments in her post and I’m in firm agreement with her that in life it’s best to have a few of these retorts ready. I have no idea why, but some people will take it as an affront that you are going about your life setting your goals and dreams, and working away like a navvy to achieve them. Their preference is that you don’t get to your dream, that you in some way fall short so that their negative view is vindicated. These people exist, they are real, so why not prepare yourself for when a Dream Zapper appears on your horizon with a list of fabulous retorts to their common putdowns?
What would you say to someone who told you your dream was not practical? Could you make it funny and educative at the same time without being offensive, but letting the Dream Zapper know for future reference that you will not be toyed with? Or hey, why not plain just offend them? It’s not like they’ve taken your feelings into account is it!
I ask this because I’m aware that as we head off to the holiday season many of us will be exposed to people at parties and functions who don’t know us and don’t support us and may take potshots at what we have to say and share. Maybe so many awful things happen with families at Christmas because people feel too free to be overly-familiar, to give advice, to share their opinion about others.
I’m not going to write you a list, but I am going to suggest that as a New Year’s Resolution you do some really active dream protecting and take a little time to note the 5 Dream Zapper comments you most fear and expect to hear in 2010 about your business or lifestyle dream. Then write the antidote comment– the amazing quip that shows you for the really brilliant soul you are, and the one who is actually committed to achieving their heart’s desire and to doing it without trampling all over anyone else.
Now you have your ‘dream protection’ strategy in place, go slay em in 2010!
Image: Flickr Robert Couse-Baker
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