permission to dream

I am not sure when I stopped dreaming but one of the most powerful things I have done is to start dreaming again.

As young children we are natural dreamers, we imagine and play and pretend all day long. As we grow up we are taught to get serious, told to get out head out of the clouds, to pay attention, stop daydreaming, grow up. All of these things and the growing responsibilities of being a parent or employee or husband or wife or homeowner can conspire to stifle the dreamer inside.

I had dreams, and one day I woke up and realized that I had made those dreams real. I have the bakery. I am financially independent. I can take my parents to dinner and pay. I have beautiful, unique, originals who are my children who love me and I admire immensely. I have a strong, handsome, attentive and loving partner who meets my every need. I have my lap dog. I am helping others. I experience joy and happiness as a regular state of being. I realized that everything I had once dreamed of had become my reality. I asked for it, I worked towards it, I kept it in my heart, and I received it. I created this life for myself.

About the same moment that I began to realize this, I also realized that I had stopped dreaming. Somehow I had programmed the belief into my mind that dreaming was a waste of time. I also believed that if I dreamed, I would become unhappy with the way things were and impatient to change them. I told myself that I was not good at visualizing, even knowing that I was closing doors before even allowing them to shine a little light onto my limiting beliefs.

The thing that changed this for me was listening to John Maxwell speak live. He spoke about intentionally growing every day, and challenged us to create 5 daily habits that would take us in the direction of growth. This was yet another example of the teacher appearing for the student who was more than ready to make a shift in her life. I was feeling a little stagnant, knowing that I was not doing what gave me fulfillment although I could find nothing to complain about. I committed pretty easily to the first 3- Read, Pray, and Write. Then I stalled. What could I do for the last 2 I asked myself. I sat at the table, right at the conference with John still on stage, and looked inside myself. The answer that came popping into my consciousness was Dream and Reflect. The two things I was not currently doing, and in fact avoided like the plague.

As I thought about the 2 that my intuition were sending me, I knew that these were areas that were absent from my life. I had shut myself off from dreaming, and so was cruising along with the flow, not really directing the course of my life. I do have my amazing partner and love who I am blessed to say is a very proficient dreamer, and has been an amazing guide as I floated along, so life was good. But somehow once I reached and exceeded my original dreams, I didn’t expand my vision to include a bigger dream! I actually needed to give myself permission to dream again- to trust that whatever I dream I can achieve, and that it is absolutely ok, actually even mandatory, that I continue to dream and grow! Reflecting became easy and is going hand in hand with the dreaming. I can reflect back on my life and see how every dream can and will come to fruition if it serves a greater good and I keep it in my heart.