When I first moved to Sydney, I was in tears for weeks. It drove my boyfriend crazy.
We’d been planning the move the whole time we were at the WA Academy of Performing Arts, where he was an acting student and I was doing broadcasting.
But when we got there, I was afraid.
Sydney was so dazzling and everyone looked so confident.
What if I couldn’t make it in the big-time?
So I cried as I drove through the city, taunted by billboards advertising TV news shows. It was my dream to work for the top-rating Nine News but what if it didn’t happen?
I cried as the weeks went by and my heart was as sore as my feet from eight hours a day waitressing.
I even cried when I got my first reporting job and headed off to a country TV station. What if I never got the chance to work in a Sydney newsroom?
What if country reporting was as far as I could go?
It can be lonely chasing a dream.
But it’s lonelier to give up.
Better to have loved and lost than never to have tried at all. Isn’t that what they say?
Randy Pausch had a dream.
He had lots of dreams actually and he laid them out with humour, generosity and grace in his YouTube video The Last Lecture.
Have you seen it?
Brief summary: Randy Pausch was a university professor and a pioneer in the field of virtual reality. He wasn’t the first professor to give a lecture on what he’d want to pass on as a final message to his students.
But his was distinctly different – Professor Pausch was dying of pancreatic cancer.
It really would be his last lecture.
He called it, Achieving your childhood dreams.
He spoke about achieving some dreams – like floating in zero gravity – and not quite getting there with others but getting valuable skills along the way.
It’s a long lecture so if you’re just interested in the main takeaways, I’d suggest reading a good summary such as the one from Shane Parrish on his FS Blog.
One thing I especially loved was hearing about the value of enabling others to achieve their dreams, which was a big part of Randy Pausch’s teaching philosophy.
I hope you have a dream
I hope you dream of raising your voice so more people can hear you.
Because like Professor Pausch, much of my satisfaction now comes from helping others achieve their dreams.
I help them with what I’ve learned through a career in journalism.
Yes – I did make it back to Sydney.
And I got to work for Channel Nine.
After reporting in New South Wales and then Alice Springs, I joined Channel Nine as a news producer. It was everything I’d dreamed of. Glamorous, demanding, fast-paced and high pressure. I loved it. And I learned a lot.
For a while, I detoured to raise a family, do a couple of degrees and work as a communications specialist.
Now I’m back to being a journalist, working freelance on documentaries and writing feature stories.
I also help women achieve their dreams of getting known.
It can be lonely chasing a dream on your own. I know I struggled. I needed someone to help me develop my skills and my mindset.
- To point out where and how I could do better.
- To show me how to give the audience what they needed.
- To connect the dots into a bigger picture when all I could see was… dots.
That’s what good coaching does. Makes it possible for us to go from good to great – and beyond. And holds us accountable for doing the work to get there.
Over time, I built my skills and more importantly my confidence that I did have what it takes to make it. I got the workplace coaching I needed to achieve my dreams.
But not everyone has that available to them.
And that’s why I’m doing coaching now too – passing on what I’ve learned so others can raise their voices.
Interested in working with me?
I’m doing free 30-minute strategy sessions, where we explore how I can help.
Click here to book a free strategy session.
From there the coaching can be done through either one-off sessions (around an hour) or tailored coaching programs for the longer term.
It’s about enabling the dreams of others.
And this time there’ll be no crying.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
