Don't Tell Anyone What You're Doing 'Till It's Done!

Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing ’till it’s done! There’s a reason you should keep quiet about your ambitions and dreams. People have the habit of stealing your thunder, undermining your ambitions and making you question yourself. When you share a dream, make sure that the person you’re sharing it with is on the same page. Otherwise it can have dire consequences. Better yet, don’t share them with anyone, just go out an achieve them first. Let your results do the talking!

A dream or ambition is like a seed, which needs consistent belief to grow. When you share your dream with someone who is full of doubt and scepticism, (like many people are), they throw that scepticism on your belief – your “seed”!

You start to wonder whether your dream is valid at all, whether you want it, or whether you should even bother. Your once alive and joyful desire to achieve or manifest something is dulled. Now you’re filled with scepticism and doubt instead.

If you’re particularly empathetic, you’ll easily pick up on any doubt/scepticism coming from others, especially regarding something that’s important to you.

Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing ‘Till It’s Done!

So, why would someone sabotage your dream anyway? What’s in it for them? There’s lots of reasons why someone would do this, and it’s usually done without their awareness. Well meaning friends are often trying to help you, keep you “safe”, or have “concerns” about your direction. Like a well meaning parent, who warns you off the career you want, to encourage one which is “safe” and gives you a “secure” future.

In my 20’s I decided I was going to become a stuntman! That didn’t get a lot of encouragement from a lot of people, I can tell you. Well meaning strangers would tell me how that was only for certain types of people, but not for me. “Former racing car drivers, that’s the kind of people who become stuntmen – but not you”…whoever you are. Pretty soon, I learned not to talk to them about it.

If I did, I might have listened. Then I wouldn’t have become a stuntman and got to hang under a helicopter, a dream since I was a kid watching The Fall Guy on television with Lee Majors as Colt Seavers!

Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing ‘Till It’s Done! – Cultivating Your Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is what drives your actions. If you don’t have any enthusiasm for something, you’re not going to take action for it. At least not any enthusiastic action. You can, of course, keep taking action in turning up to your steady job, even if only because you’re enthusiastic about being paid!

But over time a lack of enthusiasm for the job itself means you’re at odds with it. This eventually catches up with you when your resistance for a job is greater than your desire to keep doing it, or for the money you earn from it. This can take decades, but once you’re completely disheartened about your job/career, you’re forced to look elsewhere and make a change. Or, ruin your life in other ways if you fail to recognise the cause! Using drugs or ruining your relationships for example.

The problem here is that over a decade, you become surrounded by people who support your current reality. This is why change is so hard. To change, you need a new direction and new enthusiasm for something. When you suggest this to someone in your current circle, they deny it because it betrays their reality! If you could for example start an online business, and escape the corporate 9 to 5 nightmare, their situation would be worse, relative to you!

Why Naysayers Demoralise You

The “naysayer’s” might not even share your desire to escape (your current reality), and so only reflect their own beliefs back to you, instead of supporting your new venture!

Far easier to denigrate your desire to escape, and be re-assured that there’s no better reality out there than the current one. Should you escape, it would alter the dynamics of the relationship.

So they dissuade you from your new ideas, ambitions or goals, putting your ideas down and demoralising your dreams! Now they are safe in their reality, and the relationship dynamics remain the same. You think “ah well, maybe they are right”, and give up your dream!

If you are uncertain about your dream, and speak to one of these naysayer’s about it, they are sure to kill it for you! This is why you Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing ‘Till It’s Done!

Protect Your Dreams

To cultivate your enthusiasm you need to protect it from these negative influences. Like a seed in the ground, they can easily be washed away. Treat your “spark” of inspiration (or dream) as a newborn, which needs love and protection. Guard it well and keep watering it and feeding it positive intentions, even if you don’t know the actions to take yet.

As Napoleon Hill wrote in his book Think and Grow Rich:

“The subconscious mind is like a garden in which weeds can grow in abundance if seeds of more desirable crops are not sewn therein”

Your inspiration, idea or dream is your “seed” which needs protecting. You must keep adding to it, in order for it to grow: water it and give it love. There’s nothing so damaging to it than asking a friend for encouragement, and none is given. Especially a friend you think well of and trust their judgement, as you do your own.

Summary

There’s another reason to keep your mouth shut about your future plans around people. Many will subtly sabotage your plans, hopes and dreams because they don’t really want to see you doing better than them. It changes the relationship “status quo” and puts them on their back foot with you.

Many may say they want “what’s best for you”, and are only “concerned” or “worried”. But in reality they are simply relaying their own personal fears and prejudices about a path they wouldn’t tread themselves. Most people simply aren’t coaches, who try and understand what you want and encourage your dreams out of you. Most people subtly convey their own limitations, fears and biases onto you instead of supporting you in your endeavours.

When you practice self control, you give more power to your dreams/goals too. Not only do you disarm anyone’s ability to denigrate your dreams (because you don’t tell them), but each time you keep quiet, you remind yourself of your goal.

When you share a goal you haven’t materialised with the wrong person, they can undermine your belief and desire in it to the extent that you lose all motivation for it, based on their opinion or indifference to it.

Your disappointment that they don’t share your enthusiasm can soon turn to discouragement, even if they mean well!

So keep quiet and show people with your results, don’t give away your intentions!