You will never regret chasing your dreams

The story of the boy who wanted to be a firefighter

🏷️ Categories: Personal stories, Life lessons, Goals

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Photo by Joachim Pressl on Unsplash

It was Sunday, a hot summer afternoon when something magical happened.

At my house, we were undergoing renovations and needed to update the electrical system. For this, my mother called the electrician who has always done all our work—a man in his mid-40s, very formal, and professional. However, the call took an unexpected turn.

—Sorry, I don't work as an electrician; I'm a firefighter. But since we've known each other for a long time, I could do you a favor and come on a weekend to do the installation.

My mother agreed, asking him to come whenever he could, and ended the call.

I didn’t understand anything.

—He says he'll come over the weekend to do us a favor, but that he’s a firefighter.

—A firefighter? —I repeated to my mother, still not understanding.

By Friday, my mother’s phone rang again. It was him, and he would come on Sunday. Although we still didn’t understand the firefighter part, at least we were relieved to have an electrician for the installation.

Sunday arrived, and the doorbell rang.

The electrician came in and looked physically different; I didn’t remember him like this. My mother and he have known each other for a long time and are on friendly terms, so while he worked on the wiring, she couldn’t resist asking him about this firefighter thing.

While he worked, he told us a story I wished I had taken notes on.

“From a young age, I had dreamed of being a firefighter, but the physical tests were very tough, and I couldn’t afford to study for so long. I needed to start working and bring money home, so I became an electrician. Although I’m grateful for how well things have gone, I’ve always been thinking about becoming a firefighter; I haven’t forgotten it since I was a child.”

One day he made the decision that would change everything.

It was time to become a firefighter.

For two years, he combined working as an electrician with demanding physical training and intensive study to pass the entrance exams for the fire department. On top of that, he never neglected his family and found time to be with his wife and care for his two children.

Every morning he woke up early and ran before starting his workday, then spent the afternoons at the gym and studying. The sacrifice was immense, but the reward would be even greater. After two years of hard work, he achieved what he had dreamed of for thirty years: becoming a firefighter.

I couldn’t stop listening; he had me completely captivated.

What was supposed to be a trivial Sunday afternoon of moving furniture and painting walls turned into a profound reflection that made me seriously question where I was directing my daily efforts. Am I really channeling my energy in the right direction?

The 2 big lessons I learned:

1. Create habits that lead you to your goals:

We all have dreams and many goals, but do you have habits that help you progress toward where you want to go each day? We spend half our lives pondering what we want to achieve and sometimes stop before we’ve even begun because we think the effort required is too great.

30 years dreaming, 2 years to achieve it.

The habits he incorporated into his life were three: sports, study, and diet. Look at those three powerful habits. At first, it must have been extremely hard for him to wake up early and go running. After a few months of doing it every day without fail, running became instinctive, like when you wake up and make a coffee. It’s automatic.

Internalize habits that steer you towards where you want to go.

2. Prune the tree of your life:

This is Mental Gardening, and what this man did is what is done with plants. Did you know that even healthy branches of trees are pruned? You might think it doesn’t make sense and that only the bad branches are pruned.

But it’s not like that, and it has a purpose.

If you let the tree develop too many branches, it will end up with too many branches and won’t be able to produce high-quality fruit. It will have many fruits, but all of them will be small, mediocre. If we remove certain branches, the tree can focus all the energy from the soil on fewer branches, and that’s when it will produce fewer fruits but of excellent quality.

We all have so many dreams that we would need 4 lifetimes to fulfill them. Instead of wanting to embrace them all at once and in the end achieve none of them, prune and choose a few to start with and channel all your energies into them.

When you achieve them, there will be time in the next season to harvest more dreams.

It took him three years of focused effort to see the fruits.

What about you?

✍️ It's your turn: Do you often prune your vital tree? Make only the best flourish.

💭 Quote of the day: “The most important words a person can say are, ‘I'll do better.’” Dalinar Kholin, character in Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson.

Thanks for being around for another day 🌱.