A Letter About Following Your Dreams
I saved this letter for the end of February because people’s inboxes usually get hammered with Valentine’s Day offers half way through the month. I didn’t want this email to get lost in the shuffle, because this is a different kind of offer. It’s the kind that you can only offer yourself.
As I sat with what I could write about this “Self Love” month, I kept being drawn to what we ALL love – our dreams. The dreams we use our days to follow. Our aspirational dreams. Whether the dream you’re following is to own your own company, to become a great author, to become an amazing lawyer, to help people around the world, to become a wonderful artist, or to have a family one day… these are the dreams that life is made of.
And it can be really tough to manifest a dream! When speaking about it, one of my favorite comedians Mitch Hedberg said, “I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re goin’, and hook up with them later.”
One must learn how to follow their dreams in a way where they manifest in the world, or else you’re wasting your time. Here’s a practice worth giving a shot – First off, stop calling it a dream. Call it a vision. A dream is something that comes from the mind and that our culture deems intangible. To give it that value works against you. There will come a time when your vision will become apparent. It will be so in your face and you won’t be able to look away. If that time is now, good for you! The reason it becomes so apparent is because it IS one…
Stay with me.
It is “Apparent” because it offers the opportunity to be like “A Parent” to you. It guides you. It tells you the next best action to take. The question is, can we see what it requires of us and do we recognize to it?
You’re hanging out with your friends and there’s a possibility it’s going to turn into a late night, but you’ve got your final exam the next day. What do you listen to? Your mind or the vision?
You’re an artist and your piece is calling for you to work with someone you have an opinion about. Do you risk the loss of the opinion, to see what the vision is asking of you?
Your vision is to see yourself in a smaller clothing size, but that ice cream cone is calling you. What do you hear? The Ice-cream cone or the apparent vision?
Ultimately, we are the things we see and hear – whether they are apparent or not. When we hear hate, we are hate. When we see “not enough”, we are not enough. When we see a vision, we are that vision. When we see love, we are love. The choice is to make our visions apparent and the choice is always yours!
