Mohammad Askari Memos

Setting Goals and Chasing Dreams (JHP Day 3)

Mohammad Askari -

I suppose now that I’m putting a lot more of my inner thoughts on display for whoever goes on here, I might as well be honest:

I spent a lot of time on the posts I made previously, to try and get them to read well - to make sure I was conveying things exactly how I wanted them to be conveyed.

Let’s just say we’re changing gears now - my internal thought process is most likely gonna be a lot more messy, a lot less ‘academically’ styled, and a lot more like what I would write if I was just talking to myself. Because…that’s literally what this is.

The Case for Space

Recently I came across this great idea of ‘building in public’ -  that the more I share my process of creating content, learning new things and developing my skills, the more value I’ll be able to provide - and the more fun I’ll have later on, looking back too. So that’s what I’m hoping to do - build up my own platform; my own space, where I can share things that I love.

Linking back to my previous post about impact, which I think is the reason for a lot of the work I’m doing now, there’s a lot that I haven't shared when it comes to my fear of not fulfilling my goals and passions.

I’m very idealistic and have a lot of things that I want to accomplish. Talking to friends and colleagues about it has really helped me understand this, and given me a nice insight into myself. But I also have some pretty strong goals that I don’t usually tell people about, purely because they seem too crazy to conceive that I would be able to do realistically. One of the biggest dreams I’ve had is to go to space. As in - literally leave the Earth’s atmosphere and experience life from outside the Blue Planet; on the Moon, or Mars.

It feels like the next great leap of exploration to me. Moving on from century old people like Columbus or Francis Drake - into a new age, and one that expands the frontiers of both our world and our own perceptions. Working towards a dream like that has always seemed so amazing, and so crazy to imagine actually happening for me. But I’ve wanted it anyway.

Put simply:

I don’t want to get to 80 and think ‘what if I actually did chase that dream of being an astronaut.’ Because I know I’ll regret it.

I want to go for it. It’s the craziest dream I’ve ever had. And that’s probably the reason why.

Chasing Your Biggest Dreams

I listen to a lot of self help content, and one of the more interesting quotes I’ve heard is related directly to this. Chasing your biggest dream, the one that everyone calls you crazy for, is exactly the kind of thing that can turn you into someone who can do it. Aim for the stars, land on the moon, y'know?

Dreams like that are partly the reason why I do things like this. Like set up a blog to tell the world about my life, because I know it made me uncomfortable to begin with. Because I was scared. And getting over it gave me so much satisfaction, that now I don’t think twice about sharing my thoughts online - it’s becoming more and more natural.

Often its the goals that scare us the most, that are also the greatest indicators for what we should be doing to develop ourselves. Going after those things often has so many unexpected and unforeseen benefits that they can be hard to justify, until you actually make the jump and go for them.

In my case, the habit of writing daily, even before I started publishing, has given me a lot of mental clarity in terms of my opinions, feelings and thoughts about a number of things (family, career, and work life balance to name a few). But I had no idea about that kind of benefit until I started doing it.

So - going forward with that dream, and the steps I’m going to take towards it: I want to force myself to do something new and discomforting everyday.

Being Realistic

One of the other things I’ve recognised I’ll really need to shape up on if I want to chase my dreams is the habit of eating healthy and exercising properly. I want to build my health and fitness in preparation for it.

Brainstorming all the ways I could manage that, I thought back to times that I’d been on fun trips with friends, walking in the Peaks or going to climbing centres. And then I remembered Ninja Warrior - and this flood of memories from my childhood, being obsessed with the show (the original Japanese one) came back to me - getting up at 7am before school just so I could watch it and be amazed at how people got through those courses, and the kinds of training they’d have to do.

And if there’s anything that could make me even more uncomfortable, I think it would be training for that.

It’s another crazy idea and something I think will take me a lot longer to actually put into place, but I’m outlining it here for my own memory. For now, going for a run every day is enough.

I think these sorts of pipe dreams should matter to me. They should matter more than being scared of what I write, what I’ll look or sound like on camera, who’s going to look at what I make, what people will say, or who will judge me.

I want to stop being afraid of that. And I want to throw myself into the deep end.

Discovery and Experimentation

In the lead up to this 30 day challenge, my mind was pressing me to start writing early - to ease out the initial difficulty of coming up with things to talk about everyday, which I think is a common thought that a lot of early content creators have when they’re just starting out with their projects.

When you don’t have an established niche, a sector or an industry that you work in, or a specific category that your blog fits into, all of the initial posts are exploratory. They’re about finding that niche, that little slice of the internet where you can make a home. Like this website for example.

I think one of the big reasons behind me wanting to do this challenge is to discover myself and my own interests, so that I can see what I’m passionate about and what I would want to make more of.

My recent interests have moved more into drones and the FPV community, but I’m also a (somewhat) established engineer, and a student with 2 years experience at a great university. These both feel like strengths that I can play to, and also areas that I’d like to continue developing, in terms of making content.

A lot of my ideas these last few days have been from a perspective of experimentation. I’ve looked at creators online, on platforms like Twitter and Tiktok, to see what makes them so successful. I’ve downloaded resources that they hand out to help people understand how they got to where they are, and really tried to piece apart how they managed to provide value to a massive amount of people and make an amazing life for themselves online.

One of my first inspirations was someone by the name of Easlo, or Heyeaslo on Twitter - a 20 year old who became a dedicated Notion user, moving on to become a Notion ambassador and well known figure in the community, for providing resources and different templates on habit tracking etc. This year he just hit $100k in sales for these templates.

The amount of opportunity available online has really surprised me the last few days, seeing people doing things like this in their own time. And it was really inspirational to me, knowing that someone even younger than me did it.

So I feel as though there's so much to aspire to now - so much to do, and try out - see what works, explore new interests and strategies, and find that passion of mine. I'm really excited about it.

On the off chance that you've read something on here and loved it, or want to read more, feel free to shoot me a message on my socials:

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