I want to let you into a little secret. When I was younger I had a dream that every time I went to Alton Towers, the UK’s biggest theme park, I imagined that one day I would have enough money that I could shut down the theme park for the day, for myself and my for friends.

I would literally walk around Alton Towers imagining what it would feel like to have the place shut down just for me. I would imagine how my friends would think I was so awesome that I could afford to close the park and invite a select few. I envisaged that my friends would look up to me, respect me and would be impressed. I wanted to have Alton Towers shut down for me and my friends for the day, in the same way that Michael Jackson did.

I often had a number of day dreams of this nature including driving into my secondary school playground in an expensive convertible sticking a metaphorical two fingers up at the kids at school who used to bully me. It sounds pretty dumb, huh? It sounds like a typical childhood dream, doesn’t it?

But it is not so dumb, it’s a sense of belonging and respect is a natural human desire. These dreams continued as I got older. I wanted fame, status and profile. I wanted to be known for being somebody. I wanted people to look up to me and respect me. This desire for profile was deeply rooted in the fact that, as a kid, I had bad acne, I was crap at football and I was bullied. I set about working damn hard to become a ‘somebody’ just so that I could prove these people wrong.

However, this deep down desire to prove myself started to become the foundation upon which I made every decision. I created Tribewanted in order to improve my status, in my own mind. I launched thenerve.tv and Rock Control in order to achieve fame and bring in the money. The very foundation on which I based my decisions was wrong. My foundation was to gain a profile so that I could have money and status in order to prove myself to the shadows of the bullies in my mind, who had moved on in their own lives. This was very wrong.

When you make business decisions, or even life decisions, based upon a wrong foundation you make the wrong choices which ultimately becomes destructive. My desire to still prove myself, even today, resulted in me making bad decisions with thenerve.tv and Rock Control – I did not focus on clear revenue streams, I made decisions to increase my profile rather than focus on the success of the specific business at hand.

It is only recently that I have spent time thinking about these dreams as a child, this desire to beat the bullies and the subsequent wrong foundation. Once you are aware that something is wrong in your life, as soon as it comes to light then this is the first step to start dealing with it, of breaking down the foundation and starting again.

Once my desire to increase my profile, for all the wrong reasons is stripped away it is exchanged for something else that provides a deeper, stronger foundation. The desire to achieve my dreams is now based upon a passion to reach my potential. I truly believe that we live life, once and as a consequence we should discover our reason for being and pursue it with a relentless passion.

I am damn excited. I know that I have the potential to do some awesome stuff and I am on this one exciting journey to improve, to learn, to grow and as a result I will achieve something exciting, whatever it is. As I work towards my goals I make decisions, not one whether I can increase my profile, but based on working towards my potential.

It’s exciting stuff.

What are you chasing? If you have any comments on this blog please leave them before or contact me.