Accessing our Dreams -Part 2

Part 2 - What’s Holding You Back from Dreaming?

 In the first part of this blog series, we looked at why dreams and dreaming are important. In this second part we are going to look at the things that stop us dreaming.

You can’t pursue a dream if you haven’t got. To have one many of us will need to set aside time, will need to practice dreaming, will need to develop the skills and rhythms that help us to dream. That will mean we have to access and engage our imaginations.

For some the process of accessing and engaging our imaginations in the first place is difficult. We may need to look at the reasons why that is (hopefully there will be some helpful pointers later in this blog!). We may also need help to develop disciplines and rhythms help us to access and engage with our imaginations again and in a purposeful way.    

For others of us accessing and engaging our imagination is intuitive, we find it difficult to understand people who don’t do this easily. Our challenge is how to focus; how to order; how sift through; and how to structure the things we imagine or see in our imaginations. To help work through the difference between fantasy and imagining or visualising a future into being. A lot of people believe visualisation is a lot of rubbish(or worse is occultic) and is actual fantasy. But for many people actually visualising in their minds eye what could happen is a powerful way to help them execute a particular outcome. If you talk to a lot of top sports people they will often talk about the difference between success and failure is in the ability to visualise the shot or play. It is also true for many artists and creative people they see something in their imaginations that enables them to create something physically. So, don’t underestimate the power of learning how to visualise something before trying to build or execute it.

All of us must be able to imagine something and then find a way that it can become a reality. This kind of dreaming is for purpose, it isn’t ‘daydreaming’ and then hoping something will get better. It is imagining a future reality, and then working towards it. When I wrote last week that ‘……People often say that it’s good to dream but make sure they are realistic. I disagree…’ I wasn´t saying that we shouldn’t work at them, assess them, filter, or sift out the fantasy and evaluate and then re-evaluate. All this is part of the dreaming process, to bringing our dreams to a reality. The point is that we shouldn’t limit the extent of our dreaming, if our dreams are not stretching us then we are probably not dreaming or at least big dreaming enough.

What are some of the things that stop us engaging with our imaginations in order to dream?

Not being allowed or discouraged from dreaming or using our imaginations.

Parents can discourage children from developing their imagination and frown on it eg not accepting having imaginary friends or situations. This can often stunt our ability to then access and engage our imaginations. Sometimes it not so much we are discouraged or stopped from dreaming but ridiculed – ‘…they are in a world of their own’ or ‘…they are off with the fairies’ or ‘…stop dreaming and get on with something useful’ all often said with a cynical or derogatory tone.

Failure

Past failure

When we have had a dream and gone for it, but it failed or fell flat it can have a paralyzing effect on us. We are generally not very good at dealing with failure. All kinds of things tend to press in when we have failed, such as shame, embarrassment, a loss of confidence in all kinds of areas - we start to doubt our own ability or decision making or the pain of emotional and/or financial loss deeply wounds us. These things tend to stop us or hold us up from getting up and going again. Two things seem to shape this:

The fear of failure

The message tends to have been that whatever we set out to achieve or win must be a success, or we are failure but there is a big difference between failing and being a failure. The first is about not achieving a goal whereas the second is about losing a sense of self-worth and/or taking on an identity of failure.

There needs to be an environment that encouraging and telling people to experiment and explore possibilities and opportunities. If they fail to encourage them that failure is ok, it is a place to learn and build resilience, to stand and go again. When failure is not been seen as an opportunity for growth and development but more as being a disappointment to ourselves and /or others, it breeds a fear of failure that can be paralyzing. I can have the affect of making us too afraid to try something again or we are so crushed that they never recover enough to step out of our comfort zone. Another paralyzing affect of the fear of failing is to be so driven to succeed that you can never really enjoy success, and /or you’ll do anything or climb over anyone to succeed – here we are paralyzed to never really have the joy of achievement.

Not being exposed to real competition

Everybody is a winner. While I agree with the idea of taking part is important and everyone needs to be celebrated. I also believe we need to celebrate achievement and people’s ability to win and be good or excellent or better than others at things, while on the other hand be exposed to the fact that people are often better than us at things, that equality isn’t that everyone is the same and has the same ability but that we are all different, we all have uniqueness and intrinsic worth in the midst of our diversity. We should not just be able to learn how to celebrate success and achievement but also we need to learn how to deal with the disappointment, failure and the sense of loss. This helps shape three things in us:

i)               It helps us to develop resilience in the face of disappointment.

ii)              The ability to celebrate the achievements of others.

iii)            The realisation that our worth isn’t only in achieving a goal but in who we are as a person.

Other peoples “I Told you so…”

The fear of failure can be compounded by people saying or intimating that they ‘told you so…’ and “I told you it was unrealistic” rather than helping people through the disappointment and working with them to evaluate what they can learn from the experience and have the experience make them stronger.

Disappointment

The old proverb says, “A hope deferred, (a disappointment) makes the heart sick”. In all my work with helping, mentoring, and coaching people I find this is the one of the most oft fulfilled proverb. This is because we all face disappointment, in all different kinds of ways, so it is inevitable that we will all experience it, unfortunately, we don’t necessarily know how to deal with it well. We often try by ignoring it, or we cover it up or pretend it didn’t happen or say I’m alright with it when I’m really not. If we have these kinds of responses it will eventually consume and paralyze you. We must intentionally set out to heal from it. There are lots of tools and ways to do this - to really allow yourself to feel what’s going on, to name what’s going on, to learn to lament properly, to find people where you can be vulnerable and safe, just to mention a few. Being intentional in in facing it, acknowledging it and then dealing with it, is the key.

The problem of ‘Nay Sayers’

Having a lot of people in your life that are ‘nay sayers’ – they are always negative, putting your ideas down, not helping to sift through your dreams but instead ridiculing and crushing them. You need to find people you can share with that will truly listen in order to understand and then encourage you, while being willing to ask difficult questions. But it needs to be in that order. Don’t ask the difficult questions first.

A New Season

Realising you are in a new season or a changing season that probably means you will need a new dream or a development of the dream you have. If you have been in a winter season and your dream has been of white snowy landscapes and now you’ve moved to a summer season it’s probably not a good idea to be dreaming of a white snowy landscape in summer! Different seasons often usher in different dreams.

These are some of the things that can stop us engaging with our imagination to be able to dream, I am sure there are many more – these are the most common ones I have encountered personally and in my work with people. I hope it has helped to bring some clarity to what maybe some of the obstacles for you in dreaming or dreaming again

In the next blog I will try and share some the things that may help us to engage our imaginations and dream.