You hear me talk a lot about living a BIG, fabulous life & following our dreams and yet I know it can feel unreal to many of us to even think in this way.
What I know, from working with many clients over the years, is that everyone has a dream. Usually, it’s been tucked away somewhere because we’re not used to thinking about being able to have what we want (I remember the phrase my own Mum used to use when I was a child: ”I want’ never gets’), or because we believe that it’s just not possible for us.
One of my clients’ dreams was to become President of the UK Women’s Institute; another’s was to live what he described as a free, ‘portfolio career’ life. Another client, Alison, came to me because she felt completely stuck and very, very unhappy.
Alison was getting no satisfaction from the job she was doing – in her words, it just didn’t provide her with ‘meaning and purpose’ – and yet she couldn’t see any way to break out of it, mainly because she’d left school at 16, with few qualifications. On top of this, her relationship had become very stale and unfulfilling; however, she shared a flat with her boyfriend and believed that she couldn’t afford to rent somewhere on her own – so she stayed and they were both utterly miserable.
She insisted that she didn’t have a dream – if she had a dream, she said, it would be so much easier to know what to do. But, believing that we all have dreams to follow and a purpose to fulfil, I dug deeper. Alison then admitted that she had had a dream, but she’d left it behind because she believed it was impossible for her. Her dream was to join the Army as an Officer – but, of course, she’d left school without the qualifications she needed to even be able to apply, so she’d tried to forget it, even though it regularly came back into her thoughts.
With my support and total belief in her resourcefulness & talent, Alison managed to persuade her employer to allow her to study, one day per week, for the qualifications she needed – even though they were completely unrelated to her job. She joined the Army Reserves, to make sure that the Army would be the right next step for her, and she found the courage to end her relationship. She even succeeded in arranging her finances so that she could afford to buy a flat on her own – something she thought she’d never be able to do. Now, she’s well on the way to applying for Sandhurst and her life has simply taken off. Her dream is now in sight and it’s completely achievable.
Sometimes, when we follow the Dream path, things don’t quite turn out as we expected – they actually turn out better – but unless we take the first step, we’ll never know what and who we could have been.
We’re here for a very short time – 29,000 days or so (a heartbeat really) – and life is meant to be lived to the full. Don’t live with regret for what you didn’t do or try – your dreams are there to be followed, fulfilled and experienced to the max.
Alison followed her dream – and so can you.
What is your dream and what’s the very first, small step you can take towards making it a wonderful reality?
