Why You Need To Dream Again

What did you want to be when you were little?

An astronaut?

A princess?

A king?

A doctor?

Whatever your answer…

Chances are it was your dream.

At one time, you were convinced that you knew what you wanted, and even though you had no idea HOW to get there… you dreamed about it all the same.

Nothing stopped you.

Nothing held you back.

You didn’t censor yourself.

And nobody told you to “be more realistic”.

That is, until you hit your teens.

Until you started school.

Until the “adults” around you started to see you as old enough to begin making real life choices.

At that point, your dreams slowly got taken away from you.

Dream by dream…

You’re told to grow up…

To think more realistically…

To act like an adult.

But the problem is:

When you stop dreaming, you slowly stop living.

You won’t realize it at first. But it happens anyway. Day by day, your life slips into a routine. Something that you just do. Something that quite honestly, passes you by.

And before you know it, years go by and you have nothing to show for it.

Because when we give up our dreams, we lose our passion for life.

Think about it like this…

All humans look to the future. It’s what separates us from other animals. We have the ability to think ahead… to plan ahead… to dream about our future… and to adjust our behavior day to day to make it happen.

But if we aren’t happy where we are…

And we don’t see it ever changing…

Or we’ve given up something that we really want…

Then an underlying depression seeps into every part of our lives, whether we like it or not.

Dreams are important.

They give us purpose. They give us something to strive for. Something to grow towards. They give us a destination to aim to reach.

And that’s the best way to think about your life…

What good is a journey if you don’t know where you’re going? If you spend your entire life wandering aimlessly? If you have the same amount of direction as a piece of plastic bobbing around on the waves of an ocean?

So take time to consider…

What dreams have you given up on or buried so deep that you forgot you had them?

Did you want to travel the world and live in different places absorbing the language and culture but got caught in a 9-5 job just to pay your bills?

Did you want to be a musician?… but your parents told you you’d be a starving artist on a street corner?

Did you want to own your own business?… but your job just got in the way?

Did you want to be a mother?… but life happened and you feel like you don’t have enough time left?

What’s your dream?

What would you regret never having done when it comes to the end of your life?

Or looked at another way…

What would make you feel like you REALLY lived your life?

What would make you smile and think “well that was one hell of a ride and my god, it was worth it”?

That’s what we all really want.

To live a life that makes it all feel worthwhile.

But we can’t get anywhere close if we stop dreaming…

The destinations may change, you may take a fork in the road and find something even better.

But you’ll never know if you're just randomly walking around in the forest, or worse yet sitting on your ass going nowhere.

Yet, when you dream…

You open yourself up to endless possibilities, you have passion and excitement again, your creativity opens up, and you allow joy into your life.

That’s why it’s so important to allow yourself to start dreaming again.

Here’s a couple of tips to do exactly that:

Do a brainstorm in your journal and tap into your inner child. What did they want to do? What did they want to be? Brain dump it all out and see where it goes. If you want to take it a step further, you could use this cool little trick: Dialog with your inner child by writing to them with your dominant hand and let them write back to you with your non dominant hand. Ask them what their dreams were/are? See what comes up. Are they still your dreams, have they morphed and grown, or do you have completely different dreams now? Write it all down.
Pretend you had all the money in the world, all your needs were met, and all the needs of those you love were met. How would a regular day in your life look? What would you do for work - if you worked at all? And if you didn’t, what would you be doing with your time? Where would you be living? What kind of home would you be living in? Who would you share it with? Again, give yourself room to just brainstorm and allow it to flow - suspend all judgement of what is and is not possible. If ANYTHING was possible, what would your dream life look like?

Don’t worry if you’re struggling to do this.

After years of neglecting or completely ignoring your dreams…

It can be very hard to start using your “dream muscle” again.

And that’s normal.

Which is exactly why it’s a big part of my guided meditation.

You can download it for free if you want.

It takes you through the exercise of thinking about your dreams and letting them fill you with excitement and happiness again, just like they did when you were younger.

Sometimes we need to get out of our own way by getting out of our heads to truly find the answers.

Let me guide you.