Aspire to become you

When I was a kid I loved Star Trek and it’s a favourite that has continued into my adult life. One of my early memories was playing in the lounge and imagining I was on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise using my Mum’s wooden sideboard as the console to control information and take orders from Capt James T Kirk. I had a great time and was fully accepting that it would never really happen in real life. I knew it wasn’t real.

Then a couple of years ago, as I was stood at my desk doing my job, I realised – Holy crap! It came true!

I was standing on the bridge of the warship to which I had been assigned and steering the ship from the console in front of me.

OK, it wasn’t a starship. It was HMS ECHO, the sister ship of HMS ENTERPRISE, and part of the Royal Navy’s Survey Fleet. Exploring strange new seabeds and seeking out new samples and new aquatic cultures. Boldly going where many a sailor had gone before. (Namely, a bar called The Pub in Malta and were lucky to make it back on board and in our pit without breaking a leg on the way.)

Most dreams get lost in time or remain forgotten in our childhood past. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

It sounds so corny but if we stop dreaming, we stop imagining. And imagining is all part of possibility, innovation and creativity. How might you achieve your dreams?

It’s not all about you, it’s about the people who collide with your work and think it’s for them. You are doing them a service. Who might benefit from your work?

If your life up to now had purpose but that’s changed for some reason, what might you give a crap about now, if you went looking for it?

Try taking the best bits of your hero’s and create your own Frankenstein Unicorn. They started somewhere too. Who inspires you?

I’ll use a bit of Simon Sinek for his optimism and plain talking. Lady Gaga for her bravery in testing the edges. JK Rowling for her creative writing. Brené Brown for her accessible teachings. And Winston Churchill, who was far from perfect but I have to admire his decisiveness in a crisis. 

See the things they do and the skills they have, because you have them too. 

Because once you start to imagine the possibilities, you’ll start to find ways to make it happen. An idea gets under your skin and becomes part of your daily life.

And it will get easier if you stop resisting and let it.

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