Is it something you have held onto, maybe without even sharing, for as long as you can remember?

This is the third question in as many sentences, but it has to be asked. What do you have to lose by following that dream?

They'll be many reasons, excuses, decisions about why this dream cannot be followed and accomplished, but I put it to you that none of them are true.

In a recent survey (at the pub on a rowdy Friday night) nine out of ten people asked said they couldn't stand their jobs or the business they were in.

Official statistics on this, no doubt gleaned from a similar source, suggest it's closer to eight out of ten. Ask around. Better still, ask yourself the same question.

And out of those people who were 'writing themselves off' for the night trying to forget whatever it was they did for a living which allowed them to afford going out every Friday night 'wiring themselves off' (sheesh), nearly all had something they would rather be doing, something they'd dreamed of doing as a child but had let it go.

All kinds of clichés came up to justify not following this dream. "Life was never meant to be easy mate" (an expression coined by an Australian Prime Minster years ago), "Too hard" was popular and "Have to make a dollar to keep the wolves from the door."

There were many more, but you get the gist. Few held any hopes of ever following the dream and had given them up for a life of second best, making do, maybe doing something about it in the future when the kids have grown up or, incredibly, when retirement snatches them away from the prime of life.

And the age of some of these respondents opened my eyes too. In their early twenties, thirties and forties most of them, still with plenty of time and energy, barring accidents, to fulfil whatever it was they dreamed of doing.

But the voices in the head. Even in a crowed noisy pub you could hear the voices inside them, justifying to themselves and the world why it was especially hard for them and why it could never happen. All self fulfilling prophecies of course.

And I'm not knocking it. Heck no! It is confronting to step out of the comfort zone we build for ourselves and risk it all. Instead of imagining what it would be like to follow the dream we instead look at everything that could go wrong and all the worst-case scenarios that would follow.

We don't trust ourselves, so why would we trust the universe?

Living an outstanding life, one you love to get up for each day, does take something. It isn't just given, and you do have to step up to whatever line you've chosen to step up to. But when you do, and you slot into that position like you were always meant to be there, something shifts and life runs smoothly.

There will always be pain, but the suffering is optional if you are following the path you chose for yourself, and not the path you felt obligated to take. Or worse, a path someone else chose for you, no matter how well meaning their decision was.

And some of those jobs and dreams? A carpenter who wanted to be a dancer, brick layer who wanted to be a chef, stay at home mum who always fancied being a plumber, teacher who from six years old dreamed of being a writer, child care worker whose passion it is to be a chiropodist, nurse who liked her work but suffered because she knew she could be a doctor, high profile business woman who just wanted to stay at home and be a mum, office clerk who daydreamed every day about being an Olympian and many more.

It is a huge step, if we don't follow and trust our dreams to begin with, to change life's direction and go for what we really want. Especially if we have spent years cultivating a certain lifestyle and social standing we have become reliant on.

But I challenge you to do it. Don't get to the end of life, look back and say 'Oh I wish" because just at the point you recognise how easy and fulfilling it would have been, the chance has gone. Regret is a bitter pill to swallow when you are powerless to do anything about it.

Of course right up to the end of life we have the power to change it. Even if the change is seemingly cosmetic, in how we look at others and the way we treat them and ourselves. Just transforming this can transform life itself.

Take the first step towards your dream. Tell other people, write about it, draw it, snap photos, take a chance and move a step closer and see what happens. If it is truly your passion the way will open up. I don't know why or how and there's no need to know. It just does. That's not saying it's easy, but the beauty of following a passion is that when things do get difficult it makes you even more determined to achieve it, which is never the case when doing things we don't like.

As an extreme it is interesting to look at sports people who overcome serious, career and sometimes life threatening injuries to fight back and compete again. We wonder at their dedication and commitment but what's behind it is simple enough.

They are passionate about what they do, love everything including the pain, the challenge and walls they have to get through along the way.

Life's one true secret? If you hate it, don't do it as work. Find what you love, and do that instead. There are books and courses and thousands of dollars and years of life to commit in searching for those elusive answers to life, but nothing else will come close to helping you find it than following that passion, following your own dream.

Don't try and see into the future and guess how it will happen because as imaginative as we are as a species, we'll never be imaginative enough to predict what our reality will be.

We wish a wonderful life for our children. It's the one piece of advice we can give them that will reap a lifetime of rewards.