New Beginnings & The Power Of A Dream: Give Yourself Permission To Dream & Set A Vision

I have a confession to make. As a self-proclaimed optimist it was a bit out of character when this past December I told myself, I am not going to be like so many people and their unrealistic expectations of a new year. I wasn’t sure where these thoughts were coming from, but I thought, all these resolutions that people make and most never commit to seeing them through, is a complete waste of time. This is what I started thinking about. Yes, it is true. Most resolutions don’t make it past the first week of the year, but what was this thinking really about? I have learned to ask myself the deeper questions to get to the motives and the posture of my heart. I make the conscious effort to be mindful and attentive of what the underlying reason beyond the surface level, of why I do things. I have found this to be a good way of really re-grounding myself in the reality of what is truly going on in my heart, and I hope you are inspired to do the same. The reason this is a useful practice is because curiosity allows us not to just accept things at face value but enables us to truly learn about ourselves. 

What if you got curious about yourself this year and allowed yourself to ask the questions that you normally would not, what would you find out? My hope for this year is to learn much more about myself and the people in my life than I have in the past. The New Year I learned is actually a very exciting time for many (and for me too though I didn’t want to admit it at first)  because it is symbolic of what is possible. Sometime we don’t allow ourselves to imagine what is possible because we want to protect ourselves from disappointment, and literally this is what I was doing, I was hedging just in case things don’t work out not to get my hopes up. Yet I stopped myself from resigning to that sort of pessimism. If we don’t have a vision of what we want our future to look like, how will we get there? Without a vision, it is hard to make a plan to execute because we don’t really know where we are going. Without a vision, there is no hope, and without hope the future does seem rather dim. Doesn’t it? Have you ever stopped yourself from having a bigger vision because you were afraid of disappointment?

Most of the readers of this blog aren’t children anymore and as adults we pride ourselves in being practical and realistic, however what if you could put that aside for just one minute. When was the last time you allowed yourself to dream?

Maybe you feel as if your life has been filled with too many disappointments that you dare not dream for fear of being disappointed, again. When our desires, hopes and dreams keep getting delayed or don’t pan out day after day and those days turn to weeks and weeks to years our heart does become weary with disappointment and literally the heart becomes sick. We consequently become too afraid to dream again. Maybe this happened to you in 2018 and maybe this is why so many people in the corporate world separate their hearts from their head and operate only from the neck up. It is all about logic, structure, analysis and process. There is no space for dreaming aka mission, vision, or aspirational goals.

To tap into an unlimited source of motivation however, we must learn to operate not only from the head but make room for the heart. If we were only supposed to live by the left analytical side of the brain, why would stories matter so much? The human brain longs for order, process and structure and I don’t need to convince most of you about the importance of this. Yet, we somehow adapt a scarcity mindset of thinking that just one thing matters. Only one way of being is the right way.

This reminds me of an experience I had over 10 years ago when I was leading a teen program at a local church, I decided in my naïveté that all these lovely teenagers needed was someone to coach them to embrace a different mindset and their life would be solved. What they needed, I thought was more than a strategy to get out of their limited thinking, they needed their heart back.

In one of the coaching sessions with one of the teenage girls, I asked her about her dreams. What did she want to be when she grew up? If she could have anything that she wanted in the world what would that be? And I sat in silence waiting for her response … then it was like crickets. Dead silence. After what seemed an eternity I asked her, Do you want me to repeat the question, Do you understand what I am asking? She said I understand what you are asking but I really don’t know how to answer that question. By this time, I was the one who didn’t understand why she didn’t know how to answer, so I asked her why? She said, I don’t know what I want to be or what I would want? I asked her, don’t you dream of great things? She said no. NO.

I was amazed, mortified maybe a better word to describe how I felt. It was unimaginable to me that she hoped for nothing. Absolutely nothing. Maybe not in so many words, but in essence that is what it was. I thought back onto my own childhood and teen years, and I had so many dreams and hopes. I would be a world famous author, or even a journalist or news anchor like Diane Sawyer or Connie Chung. These dreams kept me excited and motivated to work hard and devour tons of literature because I knew that was the end goal. I was working towards something grand. Even if my plans would one day change, the point is, I had a plan. This young lady however never had any of that and my heart broke for her. I understood why a middle aged adult wouldn’t indulge themselves in such apparently futile and impractical things such as not dreaming but I teenager? That I didn’t get. How could someone so young, already be so jaded, but I realized later on that she wasn’t jaded, she just never had the luxury to see anything beyond her immediate needs.

What about you? When was the last time you allowed yourself to dream? If it has been a while, what has caused you to stop dreaming? Was it due to disappointment or failure? Maybe you failed because you didn’t have the right execution plan. Maybe you needed a mentor or other resources to help you learn the path. Maybe you just didn’t have access to an effective strategy. I believe one of the reasons the new year seems to bring new hope, new expectations and aspirations is because it is a symbol of a new beginning. No matter how the past went, we have the opportunity for a do-over, to try again. We can forget the past and lean into new possibilities.

Maybe your hope is deferred because you didn’t find the right process. Despite the fact that we are talking about dreaming and vision, the reality is that  structure, process and strategy, left brain activities are absolutely instrumental to making a dream a reality. We need a plan and an effective one at that. However the transformation starts with a vision, it starts with a desire. If you have no vision of where you are going, when you construct a plan to execute, how will you know that you have gotten there?

Many of us cannot celebrate your wins because we don’t know when we have “won.” We have never defined what winning means to us. When we don’t ever celebrate what we are doing well, we end up focusing only on how much more we need to accomplish or on what we are doing wrong. These thoughts can burn us out or negatively affect our self-confidence because they are not balanced. Yes, being totally optimistic is unrealistic but being totally focused on the negative or how far we have left to go is also unrealistic because the reality is that we have come a long way and have already accomplished a lot. Take time to construct a positive vision for your life … either through writing out your vision or through vision boarding and keep this vision in front of you throughout the upcoming year. Allow yourself to dream again so that you will have the fuel to execute the strategy, otherwise you may loose steam again before you have even really started the journey. 

By the way, I wanted to share one tip as you plan for 2019 professionally and personally. I have been reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear to help me map out a step by step plan of the various projects I will be executing this year as well as tools to track progress, it is an amazing book. I would suggest that you read it if you need a good guide as well!

While we are on the topic of dreams and visions! Congratulations to my friends Dorelis & Guiseppe on their unexpected miracle last week. After over a decade they finally have their little angelita. I am so happy for you both, what an amazing way to end 2018. We never know what is possible friends, never stop believing! 💕

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Have A Happy & Prosperous New Year; 2019 Is Going To Be Off The Chain!! (Yes, I ditched that crazy pessimism 💕)