I’ve talked a lot on my Facebook page over the past few months about Big Dreams and deep desires…and the most common reaction I’ve had from people is “I don’t know what my big dream is”. I totally get it. When I started out on the path of Big Dreams, I had no idea what I wanted either. I knew what I didn’t want…the life I was bouncing off the walls of. But what I wanted was buried under a pile of rubble.
It’s normal if you don’t know what your big dream is. There are so many things that can get in the way, like:
What you think you should want
What society tells you is a ‘good’ life – you know, the marriage, kids, car, house, career, fucking big television etc.
What you wanted 20 years ago
Because many of us don’t really consider what our big dreams are and how they’re evolving, we go back to the last dreams we remember, like becoming a footballer, ballerina or astronaut! Things may have changed for you in the intervening years though…my astronaut dream was crushed when I realised you needed to be good at science (not to mention NOT being scared of flying or claustrophobic…ahem, yeah, astronauting isn’t for me!) It’s OK to let those old dreams go so something new can come in.
What your parents wanted for you
This is usually for you to be safe, happy and socially acceptable in some way. Nice, but an irrelevance if your dreams take you somewhere riskier and more fun!
What your friends want
Because we don’t learn as kids how to tap into our heart and soul wisdom, we get our inspiration from the world around us and the people we respect…anyone else choose options at school and college because their mates were doing it? Yep…a lot of us do. But everyone’s dreams are unique, so you need to uncover your own.
Lack of belief in yourself or in the possibilities available to you.
You may have learned early in life that you can’t have what you dream of (like the aforementioned astronaut dream). You may be ‘realistic’ and tone down your dreams from what you want to what you think you can have.
I knew for certain that there was no way on this earth I could be a writer. I had neither the self-belief nor the faith in life and possibility. And yet here I am, having written 4 books (not all available right now – rewrites), having 4 more in the works and having also written over 1000 blog posts. Just because you don’t believe it, doesn’t mean it can’t happen!
The Big Dream journey is chock full of failure, disappointment and changes of heart – these are not a bad thing – by finding paths you don’t want to follow after all, you get closer to paths you do want to follow. Not to mention that you develop the resilience and strength to bounce back from little setbacks to keep going into a life you love with all your heart.
Flabby desire muscles.
For many of my clients, the last time they were asked what they wanted to do with their life was when they were 15 as part of careers advice. If you haven’t thought about what you want for 20+ years, those muscles will be flabby. You need to learn to tap back into what you want…and this can start with the easy stuff, like “what would I love to do this weekend”. Exercise those desire muscles.
Not taking the time to connect with what we want, and excavate those desires.
Many of us don’t look at what we want. We have no idea what we want. Maybe we are aware we want a relationship or a career…but that’s as far as it goes. Most of us don’t dig deep into our heart, we don’t heed the calls of our soul, we don’t get quiet enough to listen to the whispers of desire.
So when we first do start excavating, we find lots of ‘meh’ desires – the shoulds and the outside desires. KEEP DIGGING. I’ve been connecting to my desires for 16 years, and I’m still excavating deeply buried desires. Your deepest desires are precious and fragile and vulnerable. Also they don’t want to scare you away by going too big too soon! This theme has come up a lot in the Big Dreams Come True series – as people continue following their dreams, they get bigger and bigger and more and more exciting!
So if you don’t know what your Big Dream is, don’t worry.
It’s normal. There’s some rubble clearing to be done. But in the meantime, you can start…
Start with the desire to love life
(you want that, right? Even if you don’t believe it’s possible)
Start with the desire to be the best of you.
(You want that too, right?) Not to give yourself an excuse for self-criticism, but to allow yourself to become the you that you are meant to be. The full, authentic, fabulous you.
Those two Big Dreams are where other Big Dreams often lead us anyway, so you’ll be cutting to the chase…and who knows what other dreams you’ll find under the rubble?!
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