Let’s face it. We all have dreams. We all have goals. Are they congruent? Does our inner life reflect in our outer life? Do we show up authentically or do we make believe and work toward something that mocks our dreams instead?
We’ve heard that goals are dreams with deadlines, but are they?
Over the years in both my personal and professional lives I’ve found that folks don’t seem to follow their dreams. Why is that? We can identify all sorts of reasons, but what are the simple and most profound ones? Could it be that we don’t feel worthy? Could it be that we really don’t believe they are possible? Could it be that we have conflicting belief systems that cause us to self-sabotage or refuse to open the door when an opportunity knocks?
Worse yet, do we run away when what we’ve asked for shows up in our reality?
The latter seems to be the most recognizable for me. I’ve been fortunate, even blessed, to have had so many opportunities to perform on a variety of stages in life. I’ve been scared to death of failing and yet risen to the occasion in spite of those fears. I’ve learned the fear is also a door. On the other side of it are phenomenal rewards. People are used to having their dreams and hopes dashed and fall into the rut of ‘if it’s too good to be true it probably is.’ How destructive that is when the exact opposite is the fulfillment of our dreams. If part of us is in denial of the possibility, then how can the other part of us perform at peak levels?
How do we translate our dreams to reality?
I watched myself go through these stages, from fear to joy to despair when others have shown up in my life with similar if not the same dreams and goals only to snap back into some fear-laden rhetoric inside their heads and disappear into the shadows as a result. It seems many run from fulfillment and joy. Why? Many books have been written on that subject.
It wasn’t until my mid-40s that I uncovered a cognitively dissonant belief I held that was causing those same patterns… risk, reward and release. I’d risk being vulnerable and step up to the plate, hit a double and knock a couple of runs in and then get stuck on base. Home was something I only saw from a distance. I realized that the emotional pattern had been set up deeply when I was orphaned at birth, but never realized how destructive it was until I took a really hard look in the mirror with the question of ‘Why?’ in regards to continued false starts and short-term relationships.
So, I began wondering if the same pattern was also part of the thoughtmospheric conditions in others; “I have a lot to offer, but you are going to reject me.” It seems we show up full of vim, vigor and vulnerability, but we have this inner self-deprecation that takes place as far as being worthy of the rewards that we sorely appreciate and even suffer to attain. There’s this internal dialog that tells us it isn’t going to work or it’s too much of a leap of faith to let go of where we are to have what we desire. We can’t let go of the past in order to move into the future… and it happens in the moment. We butt-pucker and yank the reigns hard.
The same pattern happens all over our lives, in our relationships both personally and professionally. We carry around unspoken and unfulfilled expectations that we never talk about and wonder why they are never addressed. Speaking up feels like being too vulnerable and we’d surely be rejected if people knew the insanity going on inside our heads, but we let it continue. We don’t communicate, except to the committee in our head. It’s no wonder we’ve got a nation (world) of addicts and self-medicators, numbing themselves out to the very things that offer freedom and, ultimately, JOY.
Transform Your Life
So perhaps translating our dreams to reality might involve help from both inside and outside sources. Transformational life coaching is one of the resources that is gaining popularity, although it still vastly underutilized. Of course many get ‘certification’ because they are still working on themselves but feel it’s their calling to help others. Those shingles belong on a roof and not on a door or wall, imho.
Finding someone with credentials that offer evidence of mastery internally and externally is often a challenge, but they are out there. Changing your life means changing the way you think, first of all. Find someone that challenges how you think and invites you to think differently. Your life will transform as a result, but it won’t happen over night. For some relevant help, check out Cosmic Conundrum: Who Am I, Really?
About the Author: Rev. Zen Benefiel is a multi-degreed author, coach, consultant and facilitator with a passion for education and facilitating partnerships. Zen experienced a spiritual awakening in 1975, an honors student in college, complete with a very profound near death experience.
For more, visit http://BeTheDream.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Zen_Benefiel