As online entrepreneurs, I’m sure you’ve perused YouTube or even maybe attended some of the seminars by self help coaches the like, indeed they have a lot of great advice and some brilliant techniques to help us. But there is one piece of advice that I hear trotted our so consistently and it is blatantly incorrect. So many people say we have to reach for our dreams, for our wishes, and not let anybody or anything get in the way of us reaching them.

It all seems pretty standard and applicable really, after all we should be reaching for our dreams, one of humanities greatest strengths is its ability to imagine to wish for a better life and to work towards that life, it’s our hope. Without that hope, we’re just treading water, our lives are static, meaningless.

But and there is a but! If we’re all reaching for our dreams, for our wishes, sometimes they are going to conflict with the dreams of wishes of others, some of them will be people we don’t even know, that other candidate for that job we always wanted. That person that beat us out for that dream house we both looked at. That competitor that got the sale that we didn’t. Other times it could be our friends or our loved ones. We may have the opportunity to get that dream job, or build our own business, but what if it is direct conflict with the dreams and wishes of someone we care about?

I have noted that all of these teachers, all of these guru’s and experts, have difficulty answering that question. We don’t all necessarily have the right to more than one dream or wish. What would you do if the pursuit of yours meant that those of someone you cared about had to be given up? Would you have that strength? The strength to release one dream and hope to find another to benefit a friend, a loved one, a partner? Or would you place your own dreams above theirs?

It’s the old morality tale again, a choice between the selfless and the selfish. Which do we choose? The “experts” would have you believe that to sacrifice your own dreams makes you weak, somehow not deserving of success, of being an entrepreneur. I believe that they are wrong, to put aside your own dream, your own wish and search for something new so that someone else may attain their dreams takes a far greater strength than the selfish faceless businessmen can ever understand.

To each of you I ask this, when you reach retirement, when you are closing the doors of your business for the last time, do you want to be the person that climbed over everyone and everything to reach the top? Or do you want to be the one that built not a solo empire, but partnerships, teams, a business that supports your life and needs honourably, something you can be proud to be a part of. Something worth being a part of. The one that had a fulfilled life supported by their business, rather than just a business that they built in their life?