You are ei­ther in the late stages of ed­u­ca­tion or now a dropout, maybe work­ing a 9-5 or still in search of some­thing prop­er that pays and your best friends are busy on their own beat while your fam­i­ly is too far to reach.

To play the game or to be some­one in the game, that dream has been with you longer than the birth of your youngest sib­ling. You are an as­pir­ing pro­fes­sion­al with a dream to make it big. Your day­dream is in­ter­rupt­ed by a tele­phone call. It’s your moth­er on the line. “Are you mak­ing any mon­ey yet. Why don’t you get a job,” your moth­er asks? “Yes, mam­my, I am still train­ing and wait­ing on my break”. She re­sponds, “Why don’t you get a re­al job? There’s no mon­ey in sport un­less you play­ing T20 crick­et for a big side or play­ing foot­ball in Eu­rope.”

Does this de­scribe an in­ter­ac­tion that you’ve had with peo­ple when you tell them you are an ath­lete or bet­ter yet, a foot­baller, a crick­eter or a work­ing mem­ber of staff in a sport­ing or­ga­ni­za­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go? How does it make you feel when your sup­port sys­tem doesn’t sup­port you?

I’ve been there be­fore. Stand­ing in front of fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends and even for­mer girl­friends feel­ing per­se­cut­ed for fol­low­ing my heart. Stand­ing there, know­ing where my heart lies and know­ing what I’ve been putting out over all these years and fac­ing the dis­ap­point­ment of those around me, whether it be fel­low work­ers or po­ten­tial part­ners who might have let me down or not strong enough to be­lieve in some­thing big­ger than the cur­rent sce­nario at the time.

When Dwight Yorke reached out to me last week to as­sist in putting out a note of con­do­lence for him on the pass­ing of Neil Wil­son, his for­mer per­son­al man­ag­er since his ear­ly days at As­ton Vil­la, the con­ver­sa­tion re­mind­ed me of sev­er­al fac­tors that con­tribute to a suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­al. Dwight, as we all know, had that dri­ve in­stilled in him from a ten­der age. But as we al­ways re­count in our con­ver­sa­tions, while he got the break when be­ing spot­ted by Gra­ham Tay­lor in the late 1980s and had some­one such as Bertille St Clair al­ways stick­ing on his case, he didn’t al­ways have the kind of sup­port one would wake up every morn­ing and go “Things are great and I know I can re­ly on so many peo­ple when things aren’t go­ing my way.” He had to work his socks off but found a way to find the right bal­ance and per­sons like Neil Wil­son stuck it out with him, of­fer­ing guid­ance and sup­port when and where it mat­tered.

There are three main ar­eas of fo­cus that can help you re­alise your dreams when the sup­port sys­tem isn’t al­ways there. For you to thrive with­out a sup­port sys­tem, you need to have a vi­sion. It’s called crys­tal­is­ing your dream, Vi­sion is loose­ly de­fined as the act or pow­er of an­tic­i­pa­tion. What are you fo­cused on? What do you like to do? What do your dreams look like? An­swers these ques­tions so you can tru­ly un­der­stand the things you are pas­sion­ate about. When fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends try to squash your dreams, think about your vi­sion. Re­mem­ber your vi­sion is pow­er­ful and in­spir­ing. Just ask Dwight, Rus­sell Lat­apy, Bri­an Lara, Den­nis Lawrence, Stern John or Kieron Pol­lard. Mat­ter of fact even the school prin­ci­pal and the store man­ag­er had a vi­sion.

The oth­er thing is en­sur­ing there is faith. Faith in your God and faith in your­self. Your vi­sion mo­ti­vates you to ac­ti­vate your faith.

You al­ready worked on strength­en­ing your vi­sion and your faith. The next thing you need to work on is speak­ing your dream in­to re­al-time. “Speak” your dream in­to ex­is­tence. Uti­lize pos­i­tive self-talk every time your fam­i­ly mem­bers or friends try to min­i­mize or cut down your dreams.

There are mo­ments how­ev­er when we can talk about dreams all day but then things keep pop­ping up that seem in­tent on killing those dreams. From poor man­age­ment, lack of com­pen­sa­tion, un­suit­able fa­cil­i­ties and in­fra­struc­ture to cor­rupt or bias prac­tices and you're think­ing "Why on earth am I even both­er­ing with this?" Have the strength to re­mem­ber your vi­sion. Every push-up, every shoot­ing prac­tice, every train­ing ses­sion and every team meet­ing push­es you one step clos­er to your dream. None of this is new but it's all test­ed and has turned out true with many able to tes­ti­fy over time.

Will Smith once said, "Our thoughts, our feel­ings, our dreams, our ideas are phys­i­cal in the uni­verse, that if we dream some­thing if we pic­ture some­thing, it adds a phys­i­cal thrust to­wards the re­al­iza­tion that we can put in­to the uni­verse."

Be like Smith and main­tain that will in pur­suit of your dreams.

Ed­i­tors' Note:

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion.