What do you WANT? Like, really, really WANT?
Not your coffee order, or next year’s vacation destination, or even some habit you want your kid to change.
Psychology (and marketing) agrees that we human beings are actually very ineffective at knowing what we want.
Not only that, but we’re also pretty terrible at knowing what we NEED.
Crazy, huh?
And even if/when we DO take the time to reflect on what we want/need, I think most of the time, it’s more like wishing. And it’s small-thinking.
(I wish for a million dollars. Or a laundry fairy. Or 8 consecutive hours of sleep.)
Like a genie in a bottle, poof-here-ya-go kind of thing.
But not the kind of thing we actually act on.
So, what should we do instead?
One of the amazing women I follow, January Donovan of The Woman School, makes a case for dreaming.
(we’re talkin’ day-dreams, not night-dreams)
She says, “Dreaming helps us stay focused and stop making excuses.”
Hmm. (It’s hard to accept the fact that we do, in fact, make excuses, isn’t it?)
Without dreaming, we try to make the small things that we think we want out of everyday life happen through brute discipline.
But, discipline without a bigger “why” doesn’t work.
Dreaming gives us a “why.” A purpose.
Dreams are not passive. Dreams fuel discipline. Dreams fuel action.
Dreams are not passive. Dreams fuel discipline. Dreams fuel action.
Anna Saucier
Talking about it.
Talking about what’s going to happen.
Not “might happen someday if only…[insert any number of causal factors (ahem, excuses) here].”
Rather, what’s going to result when you take the actions needed in order to make it happen.
Dreaming gets you over the fear of stating what you want, out loud.
It gets you over the fear of being unworthy of your dreams.
It gets you past the belief that you can’t do amazing things.
It gets you over the fear that maybe you just weren’t created for something big.
I call BS on all of those, by the way. But, that doesn’t mean they’re not real fears.
Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week, says that “Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre.”
Ferriss goes on to conclude, therefore, that the competition is much fiercer in the realm of the mediocre.
So, why not dream big? Almost no one is doing it.Check out this free lesson from January Donovan’s Art of Being A Woman Masterclass on the Importance of Chasing Our Dreams.
