Quotes And Leadership Lessons From Dreamer The Documentary

Dreamer is the 2020 documentary about the crazy dreamers who are making a difference in the world. Having been told what they wanted to do was crazy, impossible, or even improbably, they didn’t listen to the naysayers.

Movie poster for Dreamer the movie documentary

Rather, these dreamers listened to their dreams. They accomplished huge things that no one else had ever accomplished. The list of dreamers is long. They include:

  • Anousheh Ansari (CEO, XPRIZE)
  • Lisa Nichols (Founder of Motivating The Masses)
  • Dean Kamen (Inventor of the Segway)
  • Richard Branson (Investor and business tycoon)
  • Naveen Jain (Viome founder)
  • Seth Godin (Business guru extraordinaire)
  • Jessica Cox (First armless pilot)
  • Giovanni Marsico (Founder of the Archangel Academy)
  • Craig Kielburger (Found of the WE Movement)
  • Kim Kwik (Author of Limitless)
  • Haben Girma (Author of The Deaf Blind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law)
  • Peter Diamandis (Executive chairman of XPRIZE)
  • Emily Fletcher (Author of Stress Less, Accomplish More)
  • Gareb Shamus (Founder of ACE ComicCon)
  • Ariel Garten (Creator of the Muse Meditation Headband)
  • Martin Latulippe (Entrepreneur)
  • Todd Herman (Author of The Alter Ego Effect)

Their stories will inspire you to continue to dream. They will help you realize you must dream. Let’s keep the dream alive!

Today, we’re going to look at the leadership lessons and quotes from Dreamer. You will be inspired to dream big!

Quotes And Leadership Lessons From Dreamer The Documentary

1. Phase 1 – Prove them wrong:

Dreamer is broken into phases. There are 5 phases the movie brings viewers through. The first of those is that you have to prove the naysayers wrong.

Leaders will face naysayers. There will be people in your organization and life that will tell you that you cannot do what you’re wanting to do.

We have to push past those naysayers. We have to look at the big picture.

In doing so, you will understand why you have to do what you’re dreaming.

2. People won’t believe you:

When Ansari was young, she drew a picture of a rocketship. She would tell people she wanted to go into space. More than that, she told people she would go to space.

People would laugh or patronize her. They would tell her how cute her dreams were.

No one believed Ansari would go into space… Except Ansari.

Do you know what Ansari did? She became the first female private citizen to fly to outer space. AMAZING!

Your dreams will be too big for people. They will laugh and jeer at you. They will tell you it is not possible.

Don’t listen to these people. God gave you a big dream for a reason. Fulfill it.

3. Success is emotional:

Ansari made it to space. She looked out of the porthole and saw the Earth far below her.

Tears began to well up in her eyes. She was overcome with emotions.

Leaders! We will feel emotional in our successes and our failures.

Don’t be ashamed of feeling emotions. You were meant to feel.

4. Lisa Nichols:

We’ve been told dreaming is irresponsible.

Nichols was told dreaming was irresponsible. It wouldn’t get her anywhere.

She dreamt anyway. She did the impossible… Nay, the irresponsible.

Dreaming is not irresponsible. Dreaming is how we come up with the big picture.

Our dreams help us to understand what we want to do. They help us to see something bigger than ourselves.

Keep dreaming.

5. Phase 2 – Find your superpower:

Phase 2 moved us from dreaming to discovering our superpower. Marsico shared a powerful truth. He told the audience that

Your gift is often next to your wound.

Marsico had been bullied. All the other students picked on him because of his smarts. He felt ashamed because of this.

Yet, his superpower was what people were picking on. They saw his smarts as something to attack. He discovered his smarts was something to use to succeed.

Find your superpower. It will often be next to the thing that is hurt.

6. 15 seconds can change your life:

Craig and Marc Kielburger happened to get on the Oprah Winfrey show. They were on the show for 15 seconds when their lives changed forever.

Oprah discovered how much it cost to build a school in a third-world country. This discovery led Oprah to commit to building 100 schools.

After this happened, resources began to pour in. Their passion was now life-change.

15 seconds seems like a short time. It is a short time. However, it is enough time to change your laugh.

Find 15 or 20 seconds of courage. Find someone that will believe in you.

7. Make others the hero:

Craig and Marc have created something amazing with the WE Movement. The WE Movement is a collective effort to change the world by giving young people and adults tools of empowerment to become agents of change in both their own communities and all over the globe.

How the WE Movement does this is so cool.

They know they cannot change the world by being the hero. Instead, they make the students and adults the heroes. They help them understand they have the power to change the world.

How can you make people the heroes in your organization? Help your team to see themselves as heroes, not cogs in the machine.

8. Phase 3 – Be Limb-itless

9. Your disability doesn’t define you:

Jessica Cox was born without arms. She had to learn how to live life differently than everyone else. Yet, she lived.

She learned to get dressed, tie shoes, become a black belt, and how to fly a plane (Yes, you read that right!).

What are you missing that you think you must have? Now, look at Jessica!

Do you really need those things you desire? Do you really need more than you have to accomplish what needs to get done?

I think you’ll come to the conclusion you can do whatever needs to be done regardless of whatever disability or thing you’re missing.

10. Yanik Silver:

Be the weirdo.

People are scared to be the weirdo. They think it will set them apart or make them look silly.

It may. But it also sets you up for tremendous success.

If you follow the norm, you will get normal results. If you choose to be weird, you will get results no one else is.

11. Phase 4 – Invent a better future:

Great leaders don’t look to the present. They look to the future. They’re looking for ways to make life better.

Find a way to invent a better future.

12. Dean Kamen:

If you misdiagnose the problem, you’re unlikely to solve the problem.

Kamen saw a problem. Many times the problem people were looking at had been misdiagnosed. They saw a problem but didn’t know the cause of it.

This misdiagnosis of the problem caused people to look for the wrong answers. The wrong answers rarely solved the problem.

What problems have you misdiagnosed? What things do you need to discover the true root cause?

Make sure the problem has been properly diagnosed. Then begin to work on the solution.

13. Phase 5 – Never, ever, ever give up:

The last phase of the Dreamer process is to never give up.

We often feel like we’re at the end of our rope. There’s nowhere left to go. We have to give up.

You don’t. You can keep going.

Keep pushing. Keep moving forward.

14. Find people to believe in you:

Diamandis created the XPRIZE when he didn’t have the money to fund the prize. He didn’t know where the money would come from. He only had the belief it could be done.

After many rejections, he approached Ansari (remember the first dreamer I talked about?). Ansari believed in what Diamandis was doing. She said yes.

Many people will say no to your dreams. This shouldn’t stop you. There is someone out there who will believe in you.

Find them. Pursue them. Get them on board.

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