There are many people who think that just dreaming about something is enough to make it come true. Nothing is further from reality, dreams are still thoughts and only the achievement of acts usually come to fruition.

One of the most famous Spanish actors left us a few months ago a really interesting message that many people overlook: Dreams are not fulfilled, they are pursued.

The famous Antonio Banderas reflected on the most important lesson he had learned in all those years in Hollywood:

Perhaps having killed many myths, realizing that there are no impossible dreams, that is a message I always try to convey to young people. If I have succeeded, anyone can succeed, it’s about working and dreaming hard. Above all, it’s about dreaming very hard, having the capacity to sacrifice, to work hard, to always get up, there is no such thing as total failure. […]

This is how Antonio Banderas sums up his vision of success, something that many long for but when it comes down to it, few achieve.

Recommended article: “Successful people vs. failed people: 7 differences”

What is the formula for success?

There is no one formula, and no one version of success . For your father it might be to have a 4×4 car, for your neighbour to have a finished collection of figurines and for another to be an entrepreneur and have his own company. In reality, since there is no single concept, it is difficult to generalise.

In one of the definitions that the Royal Spanish Academy gives for the concept of ‘success’, it is conceived as the “happy result of a business, performance”. In short, the RAE itself tells us that we must take action and act. Only in this way can we achieve our objectives.

And we should not confuse success with luck, there is a very small percentage of society that perhaps one day wakes up and has won the lottery, being that possibility statistically improbable, it is better to focus our efforts on a goal that can be achieved , because if we spend our lives buying ‘The Primitive’ waiting to see if it plays.

The harsh reality: if you want something, go for it

Antonio Banderas also mentioned in his appearance on the programme that according to 75% of young people want to be civil servants when they finish university. This problem probably comes from far away . Perhaps it is because of the fear that Spaniards have of failure, of being pointed at and told that you have failed in life, perhaps the problem is the high level of unemployment that exists, and that is why young people want security and stability.

In any case , it is bad to know that we have a youth so unenthusiastic, with little desire to fail to learn , to take risks and make decisions, even if at first they do not achieve their goal should not be discouraged, we can always think that Thomas Alva Edison failed 1,000 times before finding the light bulb that illuminates our homes today, so it is normal that we do not succeed at first.

The important thing is to know how to change your goals as you go along . Maybe what you set at the beginning doesn’t interest you anymore or is really hard to achieve. Psychology often reminds us that the importance of things is not inherent in each event, but depends on the relevance we want to give it.

Austrian lawyer Peter Drucker once said that “Long-term planning is not about future decisions but about the future with today’s decisions”, so if we plan well we will save many hours on tasks that do not contribute to the final result .

Being clear about your priorities is one of the keys to success

One of the reasons why we often fail to achieve what we set out to do is that we are not clear about our priorities. Unfortunately the day has 24 hours, and we cannot extend it any further . We must optimize our time to be productive and have time to do the different tasks.

Sometimes you have to know how to say no to things that you would like to do, but that will harm you in the long run in your efforts to achieve your goal. If you are invited to go to a barbecue but have to hand in a paper that depends on your passing the subject, perhaps it is worth staying home to finish it, there will be other opportunities to have a barbecue in your life.

In conclusion, we must also remember that it is entirely respectable that people are more comfortable and do not want to take risks, we do not all have the same ambitions and as we know, in democracy any opinion is respectable.

So if you want to achieve your goals, remember to plan well, prioritize your efforts and above all, work with ambition to achieve your goal.