Rediscover Your Dreams

Posted on December 01, 2014 by Inga Ruzgyte Colan, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Many Engineers I’ve known or worked with, have introverted personalities. I am one of them too. And as introverts, we tend to hide our dreams and desires deep in our shells. So deep, that we forget about them.
Do you remember a time when you had big dreams? For many people the answer is “Yes, sometime when I was a little kid…”As kids we had lots of dreams. We could fantasize all day long and tell everyone about them. We truly believed that they would all come true. And then, we grew up. What happened to our dreams? Where did they all disappear?

When you have a new dream, that dream becomes your life. It fills your heart and mind with joy and excitement. You can’t wait to share it with all the people around you. However, well meaning people start doing everything they can to talk you out of it. They insist that your dream is difficult to achieve, useless or just plain silly. You start doubting your dream yourself, “Maybe they are right”, especially if they are your teachers, parents or friends. You start to look for things that are approved by the “knowledgeable” adults and align your life with them. Your dream starts to slip away.

As we get older, our lives fill up with responsibilities: kid soccer practices, fixing a leaky roof, working away for that promotion, etc. We not only forget about our dreams, we forget how to dream. Then, one day we wake up and see ourselves living someone else’s life; advancing in a career that doesn’t bring any joy; having relationships that are uninspiring or even toxic. We ask ourselves, “How did I get here?”

Without dreams a little bit of us die inside. Without dreams, without hope, we start to move through life in a very hollow way. Without dreams we cannot create the life that we are meant to live. A quote by Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (the 11th President of India 2002-2007, and a professor of Aerospace Engineering) says it nicely: “You have to dream before your dreams can come true.” But how do we rediscover those dreams, deeply hidden underneath the layers of fear, confusion and all the pressures of our everyday life?

Here are a few tips that got my imagination going and helped me get back on the path of dreaming:

1) What did you do for fun as a child? What activities did you love and didn’t want to stop doing? List as many as possible.

2) List 20 Things you’d like to do or experience before you die. List the things that you always wanted to do but didn’t have time, money or approval to do. It doesn’t mater how crazy or outrageous they might be.

3) If you won the Super Lottery and got $50 million, how would your life and work change? What would you do? Where would you live? Who would be a part of your life?

4) One of my favorite exercises is “5 Imaginary Lives”- a concept taken from Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way”. If you had 5 lives and could be anything you desire, what might you be in each life? What are the 5 Imaginary Lives you would love to live?

Having a dream is the first step to having your best life. As Walt Disney said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”