When I was a kid growing up in England one of my best friends was a lad named Tim Carter. Tim lived in a big house with his parents, three siblings and a variety of animals. I used to spend a lot of time there and, being from a far more modest background myself, marveled at how great I perceived life to be as a Carter.
Tim's dad was a veterinarian whose surgery was in a building adjacent to the house. He was a man that I always found to be tremendously impressive and one day he sat Tim and myself down and asked us what 
we wanted to be when we left school. It was a question that I, like many twelve or thirteen year olds, had not ever given serious consideration to because I was swanning through life under the assumption that I would be plucked from obscurity by a professional soccer club and make my fame and fortune that way.
Dr. Carter, being considerably wiser than me and knowing that my chances of making the big time were slim to say the least, encouraged me to think about other possible careers and given my fascination with him, his work and his life in general, I decided that my great passion in life was now to be a veterinarian.
I recall leaving his house that night full of youthful fire and determination to follow-up on his suggestion to buckle down at school in the math and science classes and begin my journey towards my goal of becoming just like him. I had a new dream and I was going to follow it.
My dream lasted approximately two days or however long it took me to attend my next math and chemistry classes. What I had neglected to remember was that I had no particular enthusiasm, and more importantly no heretofore apparent aptitude, for any mathematical or scientific subject.
I naively thought I was going to develop a new love for those subjects because I wanted to be a vet but when push came to shove, I just wasn't any good at them and my fantasy career became invalidated by the fact that I just don't have a mathematical brain. It was a stark lesson in learning the need to play to one's own strengths and not hang one's hat on another person's accomplishments. Though I was mightily inspired by Dr. Carter he simply had a different skill set that put his career beyond my grasp.
The notion that following a dream will lead to athletic success was an recurring theme at the recent Olympic Games in Beijing. Medal winners, when asked for words of wisdom or advice for young people, seemed to 
invariably default to the "follow your dreams, work hard and you can accomplish anything" response. Based on what I learned the hard way as a kid and what I see routinely as a coach, those statements are often little more than public relations pap. Well-intentioned, but pap nonetheless.
The hard work part of the equation is easy to agree with; it is difficult to succeed in any walk of life without it but the "follow your dreams and you can be like me" notion often dismisses or disregards the obvious need for talent or aptitude. It is simply not true that any kid can become an Olympic-level swimmer, hurdler, archer, gymnast or BMX rider (how did that become an Olympic sport by the way?) just because they want to. If one has extraordinary physical gifts, an obsessive desire to improve and compete, high level coaching, access to facilities, parents or spouses willing to subjugate their own needs (such as the gymnast's parents who mortgaged their house so that she could train), the flexibility of schedule to miss work or school, some level of corporate sponsorship and the good fortune to remain injury-free then one might, just might , have the opportunity to become an international-caliber athlete.
The idea that one can simply dream or will oneself to a level of athletic or other excellence is folly and unfortunately it has become commonplace among many young people, often creating a distorted sense of 
their true abilities. College coaches often encounter young people who have very high and strong opinions about their abilities, often encouraged by, or as a result of pressure from, parents, friends or other associates and they sometimes take those opinions to be immutable fact. Fortunately or unfortunately they often learn the hard way (sometimes by butting heads with their coaches) that their subjective dreams or opinions may not stand up to objective scrutiny or independent standards and they are left to reassess, recalibrate and redirect the course of their athletic or real-world lives. For many young people, be they aspiring Olympians or would-be veterinarians, this acceptance, even when hard to swallow, of life's difficult truths, is often the necessary genesis of the maturity and perspective needed to realistically make one's way in a competitive world.
