What’s in a Dream?
It’s that time of year again when you and I start to think about the ‘new year’ and look back at what has been achieved over the last 365 days. This of course is linear thinking and that may not be the right way to go – but more on that another time.
Now if you’ve had any contact with ‘personal development’ – most of which emanates from the United States, you’ll have heard a lot about ‘dreams’.
There is of course the all encompassing ‘American Dream’ and there’s Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” and there are ‘dream building’ courses and seminars you can attend. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had their ‘dreams’ which quite quickly became reality.
Here’s the thing
In the American language ‘dream’ doesn’t mean what you and I understand it as in English. Outside the USA we are told from a young age to “stop dreaming and pay attention”, “stop chasing after dreams” and “it’ll never happen, it’s only a dream”. In British culture a ‘dream’ is something that will never happen, it’s a waste of time – a fantasy.
There is another word
In the UK many of us have a ‘passion’ for something, or a ‘passion’ to do something, and many of us have ‘realised’ one or more our passions – turned them into reality.
What’s your passion – or what are your passions?
What is it that you really, really want to achieve – or have achieved – or are achieving? So when you read or hear about your ‘dream’, creating your ‘dream’, building your ‘dream’ and so on just remember to think attainable ‘passion’ instead of unattainable ‘dream’. Over the next week or so think about your passions. What is it that you really, really want to be, do or have?
Write them down
But not as goals to be achieved in the future, we’ll discuss those another time.
Write your passions down as if they are already being achieved, or even better as if you’ve already achieved them and are now living ‘in’ your passion.
(Which of course is what our American friends would call ‘living the dream’)
I’m off to think about and write down my passions.
How about you?
