My friend called me the other day with a complaint.
"I'm having a hard time following my dream," she informs me. "As my life coach I thought you should know."
"Welcome to the club," I tell her. "The path to following your dreams, has twists, hairpin turns and one way roads where you will frequently find yourself driving against the flow of traffic."
"Huh?" she says.
"Exactly, if you're confused then you're totally following what I'm saying," I assure her.
"Yeah, but I'm having these feelings," she gets more specific. "I'm afraid of what's going to happen in the future. These feelings feel bad."
Then I had to lay it out for her, just as it had been laid out for me only days before.
"Feelings are just feelings," I repeat exactly as I had been told. "You're judgment of whether the feeling is good or bad is what makes the feeling uncomfortable."
"We all fear the unknown," I tell my friend. "It's normal, but ideally we take a deep breath, rip off our clothes until we are down to our bare bone vulnerability (unfortunate requirement), and, then, we dive in."
Or we can go back to bed and go to sleep, with the nagging thought forever lingering, "what if I had at least tried? Maybe I could've done it? Now I'll never know."
Then I shared what I was advised to do with all of my fabulous feelings: observe the feelings, as if they are a movie.
"I'm feeling sad, isn't that interesting?"
or
"I'm feeling happy because x, y and z happened, isn't that interesting?"
Then I ask myself, what is this feeling telling me about myself? For example, when I'm feeling fear, it just means I have a heightened sense of my own vunerability. And this, my friend, is what it means to be human.
Feeling/observing the original feeling, finding meaning, taking a deep breath, and passing it like gas."Ahhh."
The best part is, this type of gas is odor free.
"Hooray!"
Though it may cause a bit of initial discomfort.
"Booo!"
The blog for me, is
part of following my dream. My dream is being all that I can be. Now if I interpret my blog as being successful, because, for one week it get 200 hits a day. Then the next week my blog is unsuccessful, if it only get 30 hits a day, that's bad and I'm sad :-(.
"Wah!"
But only because I'm judging my success based on having readers. My writing is still the same. Trust me I have days where these negative thoughts cross my mind.
What brings me back is the vision, and sometimes just one person saying, "hey thanks that made me laugh." Sometimes, that person is my husband, or my son, or a friend, and sometimes it's even someone I don't know.
The vision I have for the blog someday reaching millions and changing the world by making it laugh and making it think may be a bit far fetched, but what have I got to lose? Anyways, I love seeing the expression on people's faces, "boy is she ever crazy," when I say someday millions will read my blog.
Besides, I'm already getting what I need from the blog, it's an amazingly, fun, creative outlet. And right now that is exactly what I need to push myself to the next level. Whatever that level may be. I honestly have no idea where this is taking me,
except for closer to my soulfulness. And, maybe, that is the entire point of life.
That's when I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and see the dream happening all around me. And whether or not millions of people find my blog, the good news is, either way, I can write.
Is it easy? Not always.
Do I really need to publish daily? No.
Does it take a lot of time? Ask my husband.
Am I afraid of failure? Sometimes.
But I love it, and in the end that's, really, all that matters.
"See the dream, be the dream," I say to my friend.
Silence.
"Hello, are you still there?" I ask, hoping I stuck to the original question and wondering long I'd been talking to myself.
