It’s good to think big. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get to the highest possible station in life. The problem is that when hopes are high, so are fears. There is fear because there is a chance of failure, a possibility of losing something. Some people are able to rise above this fear and go after their dreams with full gusto.

Most of us are cowered. We lose our breath. We get paralyzed with doubt. Are we capable? Are we delusional? Are we stupid to dream? Should we face reality? These are some of the questions that start to bother us. We get so profoundly affected by our own insecurities that we start to see obstacles where no obstacles exist. We are, after all, only human.

Anyone would have doubts in their abilities if they were dropped at the foot of Mt. Everest and told to climb to the peak. Instead of looking at the peak and unnecessarily pressurizing yourself, I suggest that you look lower. Aim for the first crest you can see, or the first stone in your path, or the rock a few feet away. Start by moving towards that particular goal. Forget about where you have to go from there. Once you’ve reached the first rock, then you can aim for the second and once you’ve reached the second you can aim for the third and so on and so forth.

By reducing your expectations, you reduce the pressure on yourself. This makes it easier for you to visualize yourself living up to those expectations. Aim for the mountains and you’ll at least hit the treetops, aim for the clouds and you’ll at least be in the mountains, aim for the stars and you’ll at least reach the clouds. One step at a time, always aim one step higher that you need to go.

Every human being has desires. It’s the way we’re built. We want things. It’s easy for other animals that know what they want and just go for it. It gets much more complicated when humans are concerned. We constantly want new things and we tend to remember things. See, we were given the ability to think; we were given a brain.

As we grow up we go after certain things we want. Sometimes things don’t go so well. We either fail or are made fun of or we get scared or embarrassed. If we didn’t have a brain that remembered, then we would have simply picked ourselves and tried once more. Unfortunately, we do remember and so we don’t just try again. We try to come up with a different way to get what we want or we find a substitute for our desires or we convince ourselves that we don’t want that particular thing.

Another drawback of having a brain is that we attach ideas to people. Sometimes these are good ideas, but most of the time they are just ridiculous. We believe that a person is cool because he acts in a certain way. We think someone is better than us because she already has the things we want. We think that the people we look up to are infallible.

It gets worse. Once we get these ridiculous ideas into our heads, we try to emulate them. We try to act in certain ways and we try to be infallible. We deny ourselves the things we desire because they don’t fit in with an image in our head; an image that we created for ourselves.

In the end most of us are walking around in disguise, wearing masks. Pretending to be someone we are not. We are tied down by our fears and insecurities. I think it is time to unmask ourselves and take a good look at who we really are.