You Must Be Dreaming

The title of today’s blog is the chapter title from the book Maybe It’s You: Cut the Crap. Face Your Fears. Love your Life by Lauren Handel Zander. As some of you know, I have embarked on a 6-month coaching engagement with the Handel Group, and I am going to be brave and share some of the “resistance” that is coming up for me right now.

Maybe you will have some advice for me. I am not sure. Maybe writing about my resistance to dreaming will help me get through the obstacles that my mind is constructing against the goal.

My first assignment was quite lengthy, a short bio about myself (which was not short, I actually wrote 12 pages) and a chance to dream about 12 areas in my life. This included: self, body, love, spirituality, career, money, time, home, family, friends, fun & adventure and community & contribution.

After writing our dreams for these areas I needed to rate each area and then write out the current reality and to explain why we gave ourselves the current rating. Then I was asked to explain why I have not been able to realize the dream in that area of life so far.

This is not “easy” homework! I enjoyed writing the biography. That was fun, and I have been practicing my writing skills, so though it was quite a trip down memory lane, it felt good. Telling the story of our lives can be very revealing for a coach or therapist. Since we are the authors of our own lives, I am sure that someone reading can learn a lot about what we think about ourselves from reading the stories we tell.

The dreaming part was HARD for me! I started to do it and realized that I am pretty happy with my life overall, and that dreaming seemed indulgent. Shouldn’t I just be grateful for having more abundance in my life than most people in the world? Is it really okay to want more for myself?

I started the assignment, and then when back and read the areas the next day and realized those “dreams” I had written down did not really inspire me. It was much easier to write about where I am currently than it was to risk writing down my dreams. So I re-did that part of the homework a few days later and tried to dream bigger.

I believe that writing down our dreams, really imagining vividly what they look like, sound like, taste like and feel like can be a key to achieving them. Sometimes, as Martha Beck would say, it can be painful to dream. If it has been some time since we actively pursued our dream, we may feel sad or regretful about giving up on a dream.

Or I am finding that I  absorbed some lessons about dreaming that include: “Sometimes you can’t have what you want. You should be happy with what you have. Not everyone can have their dream. Some of us have to work for a living.”

During my first session, my coach picked one of my lower-rated areas and asked me to read my dream out loud. I did. It sounded lame. She asked if that really inspires me. No, not much. So my homework for the session (we meet every 2 weeks) is to re-write that dream for what I envision one year from now. It is supposed to give me goosebumps.

Since the topic is money, she asked me to include specific numbers. I need to also write where I am now, including specific numbers as well. I will talk with my husband about this topic as well, and align on responsibilities about money stuff.

Simple, right?

I wish!

The resistance that comes up for me is all about: shouldn’t I be working the career goal first? What if I work out a money dream and the career aspiration doesn’t follow? Since I make good money now, what if I paint myself into a corner regarding goals and then I don’t make the choices I want in my career? And if buying a home is in the one year goal, what if we do that, and then things don’t work out with my career change goal, and then we have a harder road in the future? What if? What if? What if?

See where my brain goes? Yikes. That’s what dreaming does for me.

All those areas of resistance and fear come up. But I am going to stay with it. I am going to write out my money dream for a year out, and then respectfully listen but then ignore those voices for a bit. At least until I finish my homework.

Do you dream regularly? Do you write down your dreams for the future? Do they excite you? What gets in the way of dreaming up what your heart desires? I would love to hear what types of strategies you use to get past any resistance you may have to dreaming.