Letters to my sons
A collection of thoughts and lessons I've learned along the way for my little men, and anyone else that's interested.
Posts tagged with #Dream
My sons,
All of us have dreams. From a young age, we learned that the sky’s the limit for human ingenuity. We were told that we could be anything, do anything. But over time, those dreams start to fade, and our belief in our ability to achieve them (nay, whether we even deserve to achieve them) starts to fade. Most of us have lost sight of those adolescent dreams and have settled into the mediocrity that is adulthood. We are content in living the life that we’re supposed to live - a life that plods along slowly but surely, doing all the things that our culture tells us area part of a properly lived life.
Sounds pretty dull doesn’t it?
How do we snap out of that? How do we move back into a space where our lives are exciting, where we’re passionately running towards some big, lofty dream, and where inspiration comes and drives us to our limit and pushes us beyond where we ever thought we could go?
The answer is simple, and comes in the form of all sorts of cliches. Take your pick of them:
- Less is more
- Gotta take two steps back in order to set up three steps forward
- It’s not quantity, it’s quality
The truth of the matter is, our lives are so jam packed full of stuff, filled with noise, and overflowing with the seemingly urgent that we have no margin, no time, no mental space to allow ourselves to listen. It has been said that inspiration is very polite. She knocks softly and then goes away if we don’t answer the door. She does not force her way in, does not make a big fuss, does not cause a scene.
We cannot shove inspiration down someone’s throat. We knock softly, and if they’re not ready to answer, that’s okay, we can come back some other time. Similarly, we cannot be inspired if we are not paying attention to the knocking on our own doors. If we are too caught up in ourselves, too focused on our own worlds, or have too much noise drowning our ears, we will miss the gentle whisper that inspires and elevates.
If we want to hear the gentle whisper of inspiration we must first learn to listen, and to have the margin and mental space for her.
Learning to listen
An unfortunate reality of our modern world is that we are driven by noise. We praise great orators, admire the outspoken leaders, and aspire ourselves to have that type of impact. As a result, we focus much of our learning and our development on how to speak, how to convey an idea, and how to be heard.
But we don’t spend time learning to listen.
Active listening is a skill just like any other - it can be learned, can be practiced, and can be improved upon. It has nuances like every other skill does. It has its masters and its novices. Some are born with more of it, some with less. And like every other skill, where we start doesn’t matter. We can all learn to actively listen so that we are more attuned to what is going on around us.
Creating space
One of my most cherished habits is my nightly thinking and processing time. I use a modified version of Zettelkasten to support my growth and learning, and one of the disciplines I’ve picked up from it is creating space every night to process my thoughts from the day and to synthesize my notes into my own system. This process requires me to first sit and clear the thoughts in my head and then to pick up each thought that I’ve recorded throughout the day and to consider it, process it, and synthesize it into a long form paragraph or two.
Which system you use is less important. What matters is that you have a system, and you have a method by which you nurture and care for your thought life. The daily nurturing of your mind allows you to create space to listen, to be attuned to your surroundings, and to see where your thoughts lead you. This is gonna sound cheesy, but I’m going to say it anyway - your mind is like your sacred garden that needs to be tended to and taken care of. Cultivating a healthy and strong thought life will provide benefits to every other area of your life.
Cultivating our inputs
We must therefore be intentional about our inputs. Tending to the garden of our mind means we are thoughtful and careful about what we let into it. This should be an obvious one, and despite the fact that we’ve all definitely seen the effects of not guarding our minds well, most of us could use some improvement in the things we let in.
We’ve all done this and all have first hand experience with this. Remember that friend who was constantly negative and could (and would) complain about anything and everything under the sun? Prolonged periods hanging out with them probably made us more negative as well.
It works in the opposite too. When I was younger I had a great friend who was super passionate about technology and about the product that we were working together on at the time. We spent countless hours discussing the work we were passionate and excited about, and would even discuss some of the technical details of our work while on the chairlift at the slopes. It’s no surprise then that this period of my life was characterized by strong technical thinking and development, as well as a high amount of professional productivity.
I in turn was very much into motorcycles and would openly drool over the latest super sport bikes that were released each year. It’s also no surprise that my friend ended up getting a motorcycle as well.
Great inputs have the power to lift up a life, to change our mind, and to enrich our thought processes and passions. Bad inputs have the power to pollute our mind, to destroy our sense of self, and to turn a once-productive mind into a destructive one.
The gentle whisper of inspiration
Inspiration comes in many forms, and may sound different to different people. She may take different approaches, may speak through different people and events, and may look different each time she tries to visit us. She may speak to us through listening to a stranger’s story on the plane, or through the sight of a bird soaring high with “god rays” bursting through the clouds. She may nudge us when we’re dozing off watching the trees roll by on our commute, or may give us a glimpse of something greater as we’re playing with our kids.
One thing is certain though - she always whispers.
There is no sure fire way to guarantee that we will hear her every time. But if create space, if we spend the time to be mindful and attentive, if we learn to follow the little inklings that begin like whispers in the wind of our minds, then we may learn to distinguish her voice and pay more attention when she speaks. But we’ve got to be ready to listen to what she says! Remember that there is no confirmation bias for inspiration. She may often say things that make us think twice - that is a good thing! An inspired life is an elevated one, and we can surely use more of those in our world!
My sons,
One of my favorite games to play with you when you were young was the sleeping game. It was a silly little game that was designed to get you two to stay still and quiet for as long as possible. The game was simple - everyone lays down and sleeps, and the first to move around or to make noise loses. Not a very creative game, I know, but hey, I was a young dad who needed some peace and quiet, and you two were these tiny, loud, and rambunctious little things.
That didn’t change the fact though that I love sleeping. All my life, I’ve always loved sleeping. I slept a ton as a teen, and even as a young adult I’d spend Saturdays sleeping in as long as I can. The primary reason I loved to sleep? I loved dreaming. I loved the feeling of waking up from a wonderful dream and laying there, languishing in the feeling, trying to hang on to the last traces of it as consciousness permeated through.
One of the reasons I love dreaming is that dreams suspended reality. They allow my mind to build worlds, to create scenarios, to fully live out relationships and fanciful experiences that my real life didn’t enable. They open my mind, expand my horizons, and give me space to freely explore things that otherwise seem impossible. They provide an escape when I need, but most importantly they embolden me to think about the world as it ought to be, or even as it could be, instead of as it is. And then to do something about it.
Shaping our dreams
As I’ve looked back on my dreams over the years, I’ve recognized that they have been largely shaped by the inputs that I had in my life at any given time. The obvious (and probably mortifyingly funny) ones were the ones about girls. Yikes. My teenage years were filled with romantic flights of fancy with my crush of the day (and yes, there were many!). Combined with a healthy intake of rom coms (“She’s all that” starring Rachael Leigh Cook was my teenage favorite) and sappy love songs (“Kiss me” by Sixpence none the richer), I imagined many a sunset walk on the beach or a picturesque convertible joyride through the hills.
As I thankfully moved past those years, my college life of computer science, helping out younger class mates, and learning to ride motorcycles moved my dreams in those directions, and I found myself dreaming of working at Microsoft, of being an adjunct professor, and of exploring the continent on a motorcycle. Graduation brought dreams of success, of starting a family, of having two wonderful children, and of finding my place on the long road of adulthood.
But then a strange thing happened. I began to read more. I began to deviate my life from the daily grind, and began to fill my mind with books and with the ideas that those books brought about. While my childhood and adolescent reading was primarily filled with fiction which helped me dream of new worlds and encounters, and my regular, socially accepted inputs like watching Friends for a decade filled my dreams with common and relatable topics, in my thirties I started to really read. I read to learn, I read to grow, I read to become a better person.
Books like Mindset by Carol Dweck, The top five regrets of the dying by Bonnie Ware, When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi, Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella, and Infectious Generosity by Chris Anderson again shifted my dreams, this time in a much more elevated fashion. My dreams now turned to making an impact on our world, on figuring out how the world ought to be, and on finding my place and impact in it so that I could leave the world better than when I entered.
And slowly but surely I became convinced that we can shape our dreams. By controlling our inputs, by being intentional about the things that we exposed ourselves to, and by being staunch guardians of the inputs we allowed to influence us, we can guide and direct our dreams to topics and explorations of ideas that we want. Instead of allowing the activities of our subconscious minds to be governed by things like media (traditional or social), advertisements, and the general pessimistic and sensationalistic existence that is our societal norms, we can endeavor to shape and guide our unconscious thoughts and musings intentionally and according to the things that we value.
How do we do this?
We need to first recognize the impact that our daily experience has on our dreams. The environments we’re in, the worries that we have, and the set of activities we apply our efforts to in our conscious and waking moments all impact what our minds expand on in our subconsciousness.
One of the most beautiful characteristics about the human race is our ability to dream, to be inspired, and to find our own meaning and purpose for life. We do not merely exist and carry out our physical functions; no, we take those functions and try to assign meaning, to derive value, and to create joy in our experiences. The bigger we dream, the more our lives expand and the more rich our experiences become.
Dream big
So how do we then dream big? How do we get inspired, both consciously and subconsciously to take on bigger and better things? How do we go from a life that is rooted in the mundane experiences that our society places upon us - going to work, swiping up on your social media accounts, taking kids from place to place, and generally just running the rat race - to one that is uplifted, elevated, and expansive?
- Notice your posture. Have you ever noticed that we spend an inordinate amount of time looking downwards? Whether it’s physically looking down at our phone screens and the like or metaphorically looking down on other people and on situations that we judge, we spend a lot of our posture looking downwards. Look up. Look up at the heavens, at the grandness of the world above and beyond us. Look up towards the inspiring stories of those who strive to elevate life, to make our world better.
- Stop and smell the roses. We’re so busy with our lives that we never take time to rest, to have margin, to have space. When we force ourselves to smell the roses, when we turn our rat race running brains off, when we allow our conscious mind to lose focus and allow our subconscious to drift, we begin to rest. We begin to wonder. We begin to wander. We begin to dream.
- Read. I firmly believe that reading is the most important thing a person can do. If there is only one thing that you learn from me in our time together, if there’s only one thing I can impart on your lives as you grow, my hope is that you learn to love reading. Read books on life, on philosophy, on science, on generosity. Read biographies, fiction, exposition. Read for fun to enjoy a lazy afternoon. Read for study. Read to learn. Read to dream.
- Surround yourself with dreamers. We become like those around us. We adopt and elaborate upon the shared experiences with those closest to us. We can be lifted up, we can be anchored down. We can be inspired, we can be terrified. By surrounding yourself with dreamers and by creating times to discuss, to share, and to work out those dreams, we orient ourselves accordingly.
And so my boys, my hope for you, my dream for you, and my prayers for you are that you are dreamers, that you become men who both see the world as it is and as it could be, and that you be men of big dreams and even bigger actions to help us get there. I love you guys!
My sons,
We were made to dream. Before we even learned to speak and communicate, we learned to dream. There were a few sad nights when you little guys had nightmares, but thankfully those were the exception. More commonly we have beautiful dreams that inspire us, that soothe us, that excite us, or even embolden us to action. We were built to dream.
When you guys were little, you’d run around pretending to be firefighters, Air Force pilots, astronauts, or even professional soccer players. Children everywhere dream big dreams and run after them.
But for some reason, as we get older, we lose that. We get lost in the assembly line of adolescent preparation for adulthood and we lose sight of those dreams. We put them in a box, slap a “childhood memories” label on it, and stick it on the shelf, letting it collect dust over the years until it’s a long lost forgotten fragment of our younger years.
Gallup reports that roughly 20% of adults report actively pursuing their dreams, and only a third of those report achieving them. The rest of us go through life living uninspired, unambitious, and proper lives that are expected of us.
Sad, huh?
How does one live out one’s dreams?
It is easy (in comparison) to have dreams. It is much harder to live out those dreams, to run hard after them, and to pursue them with every fiber of our being. There are a number of things that can help make the journey palatable (and even possible).
1. Intrinsic motivation
When we were young, most of our motivation was extrinsic. Extrinsic motivators are motivators that are not your own, that are not core to your being. Things like parents pushing you, peer pressures, fear of falling behind, or even the communal pressure of living up to what’s expected of you.
To be clear, extrinsic motivators aren’t bad. In fact, they’re necessary for our survival and thriving as a society, and are a fundamental jump starter in one’s life. When we were young, our intrinsic motivators were for sleep, for food, and for play. Extrinsic motivators came in to motivate us to share, to collaborate, to learn, and to read. These are important.
Living out our dreams requires intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivators are ones that you have internally, that are self-generated, and that are self-accountable. They are the things we do not because we want to do them, but because we feel deeply that we have to do them. They are a part of us. They are a part of our identity. They are an expression of our true selves, of the way that we believe we ought to live, the lives that we ought to have.
Runners don’t run because they want to reach a destination. They run because they love the run. They set their own distance, their own starting and ending markers, their own pace, their own goals. There is nothing external about that. It’s all internal. It’s all about you and what you want out of the run.
Intrinsic motivators are several fold more effective in maintaining focus, and in providing a lasting fuel to our industry. Because they are intrinsic, they need to be learned, practiced, and developed like every other muscle in our body. From an early age, children can develop the strength of their intrinsic motivators. They need time to play, to be bored, to wander, to try things out, and to discover those for themselves. By taking away all the freedom from their play and providing a ton of structure (ie here’s what you’re going to play, when, with whom, with what rules, etc), we rob them of the ability to figure that out themselves and in doing so figure out what their own intrinsic motivators are. The more we apply our intrinsic motivators the more strength they will have in fueling our endeavors.
When I was in high school, I had a number of high achieving friends. They were studious. They got straight As. They took advanced math classes and would school me on every test we had. They were bright, had creative ideas for class projects, and generally were earmarked for huge successes (at least, that’s what was written about them in our yearbook).
But once we got to university (yes, I’m Canadian, so we called it university… not “college” as the Americans do, or “uni” as our British friends do), they completely unraveled. Turns out without the ever watchful eye of Sauron (okay, okay, I’m a Lord of the Rings nerd… how bout eye of mom and dad then?) dictating their schedule and motivating them to do well, they had nothing to fall back on, no intrinsic motivation to get them through.
2. There is much beauty in the details
Great dreamers know that there is much beauty in the details. They, like great artists, know that the big picture is not enough. They know the secret ability that details have to generate great joy. They know that meticulously poring over every detail and painstakingly agonizing over every inch allows those who view the work to be uninterrupted in their experience.
It is one thing to enjoy driving. It is another to notice the smoothness of the gear shift, the refined but powerful roar of the engine, the accent stitching on the seats, and the amazing synchro alignment that allows downshifting to feel as smooth as butter. These details generate a richer and deeper happiness and connection with the car than simply enjoying stepping on the pedal and going.
This is true in every area of life. Whether we’re talking about the subtle hints of floral and fruity fragrances in the bouquet of wine, the refined brush stroke applied to a masterpiece, the technical complexities and details behind a seemingly simple everyday product, or the delicate lilt in the angel’s voice as she sings her aria, details and their recognition and appreciation are transformative.
As our senses are refined and heightened we begin to notice and appreciate each of the tiny details that make up the greater whole. This in turn allows us to be consumed by an experience, transported into a world where time stands still and there is simply the experience itself. And that, is a beautiful thing.
3. Sharing the gift
Passion is contagious. It is not learned, not cultivated, not given. It is inspired. It is sparked by others with passion. It can be a sudden ignition of an already-fertile ground, or can be the slow methodical rubbing together of sticks Boy Scout style. It is shared. It must be shared.
And so for the rare dream that does become a reality, for the one in a million dreams that is realized, we have a moral imperative to share it. When your dream becomes a reality, it doesn’t just belong to you. It belongs to the people who helped you - your family, your friends, your coworkers. It belongs to the world.
So share it. Share it for those who helped you get there. Share it for all those who may never have their own dreams realized, but want to be encouraged and uplifted by the stories of others. Share it as a testament to the power and beauty of the human spirit. Share it so that there is more light in the world than darkness. But most of all, share it so that you never forget it.
My sons,
When you get to a certain age, it becomes quite common for most people to have fairly well-formed (and often strong) opinions on the passage of time. Some hate it, perpetually longing for a return to the glory days, a time long past where things were undoubtedly better. People in this camp tend to live for and live in the past, often keeping trophies of a time gone by, memories of a time when they were at their prime. They run around romanticizing the past, of simpler times, of more prosperous times. You’ll recognize them by their speech, their rhetoric - “I can’t believe I’m another year older!”, “where has the time gone?”, “things were so much better back then”, or even, “we need to make things great again”.
And then there’s the other camp. The camp that believes that the best is yet to come, that tomorrow will be better than today, that values all the phases and experiences that life has to offer. These people are marked by their forward-facing demeanor. They are characterized by their unwavering focus on the future, their can-do attitude, their creativity, and their desire for progress. These people run around painting grand and lofty pictures of what the future ought to look like, and in fact could look like if we worked together to reach for it.
Incidentally, there is in fact a third camp; a doomsday camp that believes the past was terrible, but that the future will be worse, so you should only live for the present. This camp is much less interesting, so we won’t bother with them.
The thing with our two groups of interest is that they both desire for the future to be great. However, their focus and approach is entirely different.
Romantic reminiscers
Those who find solace in the embrace of the past tend to resonate strongly with the concept of romantic reminiscing, and often have a strong sense of nostalgia. This cognitive bias embellishes their memories, leading them to think that the past was objectively great, when really what they’re actually tapping into is the feeling of novelty and of greatness in their own past experiences.
One of my favorite shows as a kid was Saved by the Bell. I was absolutely in love with Tiffany Thiessen, and I spent many a daydream wishing that my adolescent experience was more like Bayside, and that someone so perfect as Kelly would wander into my life. Years later after I had graduated from College and the show had been long since done, my brother and I saw the DVD collection on sale at Fry’s, so we picked it up and brought it home.
It. Was. Terrible.
Like, really bad. The acting was quite rough, the lines were cheesy, the costumes were comical at best… Really, the only thing that still held up was Tiffany Thiessen. (Incidentally, I also loved her performance as Elle in White Collar). Needless to say, after watching one or two episodes, we promptly put the DVDs away and never pulled them out again.
We all do this though, don’t we? We reminisce about the past - and rightly so! Those of us that were fortunate enough to grow up in safe, loving, and supportive homes that allowed us to blossom into the beautiful humans that we are now are truly blessed to have had those experiences, and it is a good thing to look back on them fondly. But that’s where it should stop - at beautiful reminiscing.
Unfortunately, maybe people stay in the past and have a hard time embracing the present as it is. They have an even harder time seeing the unknowns and uncertainty of the future. This fear of change - or as psychologists call it, “loss aversion” - is a fear that must be conquered, not a philosophy for enacting a return to bygone days.
Life moves on, and so must we.
Having faith for the future
Those who steadfastly look towards the future with unwavering optimism on the other hand, tend to possess a strong sense of self-efficacy and self-confidence. They expect positive outcomes and believe that the future holds greater promise, which in turn fuels their proactive approach to life. This in turn fosters the belief in their ability to shape their own destinies, and to overcome obstacles along the way.
This resilience, this ability to look to the long term, this faith that we have not crested the peak of human experience brings us several strong benefits.
- We don’t sweat the small stuff. When we have the mindset that tomorrow will be better than today, the small stuff that happens today is taken in context of a greater tomorrow and is able to more readily roll off our backs without doing much damage.
- We inspire and are inspired by others. When we focus on the promise of tomorrow, believing full well that we can make tomorrow better, we start to apply our not insignificant energies and resources toward that end. There is an innate desire in human nature to look upwards, to think big, to be inspired by grand and lofty visions. Since the dawn of the age mankind has looked to the heavens for inspiration, and has looked to individuals who seem to have a vision of what that heaven could be like.
- We are healthier. Believing in a better future means believing that future can come for us, and as a result we are much more likely to engage in health-promoting activities. We exercise more. We eat better. We prioritize our well-being, physically, emotionally, and mentally. We live longer because we believe we have more to live for!
Bringing others along
When we think of inspiring people, people who can rally a crowd, can move a city, can change a nation, people who can truly think big, we notice a few things about them.
First, they recognize that one camp is better than another. In fact, they don’t even see the camps as being at odds with one another. They understand that we are all different, and that’s okay! Their goal isn’t to find like minded people and isolate themselves from other-minded ones; rather, their goal is to understand one another, to see each other’s perspectives, and to have open and honest dialogue together.
Second, they know that in the deepest recesses of our hearts we all long for this world to be better. Whether our circumstances have caused us to be jaded or not is another matter altogether. Thinking big means that regardless of whether one is blessed with circumstances and experiences that have led them to see that the world can and will be better or if one has suffered much and can no longer see tomorrow as more than another opportunity for more pain, we unite, we inspire, and we bring each other along.
Lastly, they know that thinking big isn’t just about having vision. It isn’t just about having a grand and lofty idea that can change the world. It’s about taking the vision, sharing it with others, and letting it spread to others so that united we are better, and we can make our world better. Together.
My sons,
We are a species that is obsessed with memories. We spend so much time and money on inventing, creating, buying, and consuming technology centered around memories. Since the earliest times we can recall, humankind has spent countless hours and energy on memories. If we travel far back enough, we give memories the fancy term of “history”. Our modern day PR for the term is “social media”, or “news feed”, but whatever way we spin it, it is all centered around memories. Documenting what has happened, solidifying it for all eternity.
These recorded memories take different forms. History books attempt to record factual memories. Memories capture thoughts, feelings, and remembrances of the rich and famous. Period pieces attempt to paint (typically with rose colored glasses) a picture of a time long past in its prime, filled with life, mystery, and drama. Memories are rooted in the finite, of time that has been concretely shaped, of the road that has already been travelled.
The problem with spending so much of our time and mental energies on memories is that they are all in the past. We remain forever rooted to what has already come, and as a result are always looking backwards. Many of us romanticize the past (in fact, our brains do this on purpose so that we can forget the pain and bad memories of the past and instead can move forward).
Now don’t get me wrong; I enjoy a good nostalgic trip down memory lane as much as the next person. But we cannot allow our focus to remain there, cannot allow our time to be entirely consumed by our reminiscing.
Dreams on the other hand, focus on the future. They focus on things which have not yet come to pass, and keep our eyes looking forward. They paint a very different picture - one of possibility, of potential, of the expansive and the infinite. They ignore the details of what is and allow us to focus on what could be. They too vie for our time and our mental capacity. They too seek regular visitation from our consciousness, but they have a very different focus and motive.
Why it matters where we spend our time
Why does any of this matter? Can’t we simply allow our minds to wander where they will and call it a day? Why is it important for us to think through whether we’re spending our time snapping photos to edit and post on social media or thinking through how to make our dreams a reality?
The obvious one is that time is finite. This is obvious, but is also misleading.
It is true that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, and that we all go through periods of life where we feel like we’ve got all the time in the world. For arguments’ sake, let’s assume we all live standard long-ish lives (in the US as of writing, the average life span is 79 years old).
But even then, not all time is created equal, because despite wall clock time being a finite and universally equal thing, the way we experience it is not equal. For some experiences, 5 minutes may feel like an hour. A year may feel like a decade. A season may feel like an instant.
For instance, I had the privilege of taking an auto cross class, and the 73 seconds it took for me to do a lap with 4 laps had the experience feeling like it was a 15-20 one. This past year of my life has been richly filled with experiences and relationships that it has felt more like a decade than a year. For some, the past three years since the COVID pandemic hit has felt like months, and they remember 2019 like it was yesterday.
Our experience of time depends on what we do and how we do it.
This means that what we do with our time is more important than how much time we have. Explicitly, this means that instead of attempting to prolong our measurable time by tacking on additional time at the end, we should aim for prolonged experiences where time seems to stand still and stretches, and our experience of it lengthens. Instead of being an exercise nut, eating large quantities of kale, quinoa, and whatever other “superfood” is currently trendy, and focusing on extending life we should focus on adding more substantial experiences to our lives.
How do we elongate our experienced time?
I believe that time feels longer because of novelty. When experiences are new, when we experience inputs that we’ve never encountered before, and when we view the world with a different perspective than we had in the past, time seems to slow down. This is additionally magnified by our attitude towards these novel experiences - do we embrace trying new things and learning? Or are we closed off to them?
Clearly my belief is that openness is best (more on that some other post).
This is backed up by our own personal experiences. For instance, our childhood is a complete cauldron of novelty, and therefore ends up often feeling like a much longer period of our lives than it actually is. Everything is new, every feeling, every experience, every situation - all new. First loves, first breakups, first championship goal, first failure. All of these firsts are imprinted in our minds, and our experience of those feel elongated.
It is not an accident that we call those years our formative years; our childhood and early adulthood are periods filled with core memories and events that shape us and last throughout our lives. The reason? Novelty.
This does not mean we should go out seeking novel experiences all the time! While some of those experiences are perfectly justifiable, we should also be seeking novel ways to look at existing experiences. This may mean asking a friend a question you never dreamed of asking. It may mean a conversation or a new attitude towards something that has been in your life for decades.
Dream big
In order to put ourselves in these novel situations, we need to dream. This is explicitly different than daydreaming. Daydreaming is for all practical purposes equivalent to wistful and wishful thinking without any action or impact on ones life. Dreaming big however is an explicit and intentional action that we take to think about our world not as it is but as it ought to be. It is a future-focused activity that prepares our mind for the possibility that something new will happen to us and in us.
A few thoughts on dreaming big.
- The wider our range of inputs in our lives the bigger the canvas we have on which to dream. By being open to a wide range of experiences, by putting ourselves in circumstances that we have never encountered, and by reading and conversing with people that have different perspectives than we do, we stretch our mind’s ability to dream and in doing so create a virtuous cycle of growth.
- Some of your dreams should scare you. Not because they’re nightmares, but because they’re so big that imagining them take hold of your life is breathtaking and borderline terrifying. This is a good thing. If you’re never scared of the possibilities of realizing your dreams, you’re not dreaming big enough.
- Dreams are best shared. Sharing our dreams with our close loved ones allows us not only to inspire others, but be inspired by others and to refine our dreams so that they can start taking shape in reality. By creating a culture of love and trust where we can share our dreams without fear of ridicule or persecution we enable ourselves to freely express, to push our boundaries, and to safely explore the vast world of possibilities out there for us.
The important question then, is what you’re doing with your time. Do you spend your time living in the past, reliving old memories, and longing for days gone by? Or do you have an adequate reverence for the past while focusing on your dreams for the future?
My sons, my hope for you is that you find that right balance that allows you to reminisce and to nostalgically relive the past appropriately, dream big about the future, and live passionately in the here and now.