Becoming a Master Dreamer

(Series Wrap Up)

Notes on Dreaming

We’ve been exploring the subject of dreaming.  Here’s a recap of the series:

Are You A Dreamer? – In the first issue, we looked to Martin Luther King, Jr. as a model for courageously dreaming in the face of difficulty.  I asked you to consider: What do you dream for yourself?  What do you dream for your loved ones?  Do you have a dream for the world?

Why Even Dream? – Here we addressed the necessity of granting yourself the permission to dream.  Once you do this, you are creating the space for your truest desires to be revealed and for ideas to be generated which you might never have otherwise considered.

Get Distracted – Paying attention to ideas as they occur to you is important because often inspiration enters by means of a distracting thought.  After having recalled the dreams of your childhood, we posed the question: What are your current dreams?

Let Your Dream Inform You – Getting to the heart of your dream is essentially mining for your own wisdom.  Once you understand what your dreams are telling you, deciding your next action will be easier.  To do this, ask: What is appealing to me about this dream?  What would this dream make possible (in my life or the lives of others)?

Is This Just A Dream? – In order to cross the bridge from dream to reality, you must move.  Here we talked about getting specific and identifying five things you can do to research (or take action toward) your dream.

Protect Your Dream – Your dream needs protecting from the limited thinking of others and also from your own limited beliefs and fears.  This means two things: 1) Be selective with whom you seek support and 2) Learn how to feed your own motivation.

Over the course of this series, what have you learned about your own capacity to dream? 

Building Your Capacity to Dream

The formula to realizing more than you ever thought possible is this:  Dream… Act… Dream… Act… Repeat.  Dream enough to get your heart pumping with excitement and your brain brimming with ideas.  Write down your thoughts and allocate a certain place (journal, folder, notebook, box, poster board) to keep notes, symbols, and pictures of your dream.  Then, take persistent action because when you move, your dream comes into clearer focus and becomes real.  When you take action, you are giving your dream legs… and wings!

The Attitude of a Master

We often evaluate whether a dream is “worth” pursuing by making a quick assessment of whether we can actually picture having it all come true.  This only serves to hold us back.  After all, if any piece of it comes true, wouldn’t that still be wonderful?  It is best to put on the attitude of a master.  Masters expect their dreams to be bigger than they can grasp – that is inherent to their dreaming.  Look at the prayer one master carried in his heart:

"Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish."
– Michelangelo

Here's to you,