(11) What I learned about living my dreams – Part 2!

The second reason people don’t follow their dreams is because they don’t believe in them enough.

Easier said than done I know.

Not that recall chunks of the bible much in my everyday life (?!) but listen to this:

“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Mark 11:24

So even way back then Man was aware of the power of belief.

I came across something similar when I first started learning about Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). I had been working with a brilliant Master Practitioner, Michael, on a few issues around the stresses associated with being a newly qualified teacher. It was a course being offered to all NQTs when they started in the, very progressive, London borough of Newham. Anyway, my teaching story is that I decided to train to be a teacher and, about one week into the Post Graduate Certificate of Education at the very prestigious Institute of Education at London University, I decided it was all wrong. No, not me at all. Gulp.

I’d come to the conclusion that all schooling was merely institutionalised babysitting and that we were, in fact, keeping our kids away from the very society they should be exploring. I could go on, but I’ll save my ‘education is flawed’ rant for another day. But I was on the course now so I felt I had to see it through and perhaps I could get work in some peripheral, supportive role in education. Something with more freedom to tweak the curriculum to ‘real’ learning (see how bitter I was?). Six months later, and with me even more restless, it was interview time: all students were required to apply for and be interviewed for teaching posts. I launched myself into it feeling I should participate for the experience if nothing else. I had little intention of joining the ranks of the perpetrators of the schooling myth (teachers). Happily for me I spotted a job teaching metalwork in an east London Boys’ school that was 1½ miles from where I was living. Not so happily for me I went and landed the job.

OK I said. I’ll do it for two years and then I’ll get out. After all I have to know what it’s like inside, if I am to be able to influence education at large in any way. Within that first year I’d been introduced to Michael and the spooky wonders of NLP. And so, in one of our early sessions, Michael had asked about what would be my ideal working situation. Without even thinking I said I would like to be earning the same amount of money, but only working three days a week. Where did that come from? Michael and I explored the motivation for this declaration, programmed it in and job done.

Time passed and I duly left teaching after my allotted couple of years. Don’t get me wrong, I actually really enjoyed being part of the school, the kids were fantastic fun and, on the whole, the staff were very dedicated and interesting people. But it was simply time for me to go. I didn’t leave teaching for any other specific work, I just picked up bits and pieces from the various contacts I’d made over the years. Then I bumped into a colleague (at a tube station!) who said, co-incidentally, she’d been thinking of getting in touch as there was ten days work at the education business partnership she worked for. Another rambling story later and I ended up working there for three years. And oh yes, on better money than when I was teaching, and only three days a week. It took me a while before I realised I’d got what I’d asked for . . .

I think my chequered career since then has much to do with my belief that I can do what I want to, and be paid for it. That realisation did rather set me free from having to find a ‘job’. Though finances can be unreliable and a bit hairy at times I still live with that confidence now.

(10) What I learned about living my dreams – Part 1!

Capturing your dream or goal.

Why it is important?
 
One of the main reasons people fail to achieve something they dream of is because they don’t define it clearly enough. You may have an idea about what you want to achieve, even pictures in your head, but if it only exists in your mind, it is much less likely to happen in the real world.

You have a much stronger chance of getting to where you want to be if you tie your dream down to words and pictures. The process of capturing your dream in this way serves two very useful purposes.

The first one is that by committing your dream to paper in some way you are more likely to elaborate on specific details. The more detail in a goal or dream the better as it makes it become more real to you. You don’t need to go into huge detail as you start to put your ideas down but, just by starting you are then creating a framework which you can add details to later. And if you change your mind about anything, write in the changes as you go along. This is not a fixed plan; this is a living, growing dream.

The second purpose to capturing the dream is to trick you mind into thinking your dream is ‘real’. This happens because our minds can only work on positives (try describing a hole in the ground without using words for actual ‘things’ such as ‘earth’ and ‘air’). If your dream is still in your head it doesn’t yet exist, the act of writing describing it makes it into a ‘fact’ for our minds. If something exists as a fact, the mind can then go to work, filtering subconscious information and feeding it back to you. It’s the same principle you may have noticed if you decide to buy a particular car for example, you decide on the make and model and then suddenly you start to see them everywhere. It happens because your mind is ‘tuned in’ to that particular car and therefore brings your conscious attention to the car every time it notices one. Now that’s exactly what you want to happen with your dream or goal. You want your mind to start being creative, making connections and bringing your dream into reality.

How to go about capturing your dream or goal.
 
Some people find their dreams and goals best captured by words, other prefer to use images to pin down their exact thoughts.

To start to capture your dreams or goals for your future you need a few materials. If you feel you want to work by writing down your dream, buy or use a new book that you will use for this purpose only. This way it won’t get muddled up with other notes you may be making or accidentally used for kids’ scribbling or shopping lists. Most people prefer a largish A4 lined book, some like hardback, others like a nice cover on the front. The point about choosing something you like and is special to you is so that you use it, not leave it languishing in a drawer somewhere. Another tip to get started is to not be precious about what you are writing. Don’t hesitate to start scribbling down your dreams and goals, they are only for your eyes. I used to have a real thing about the first blank page, whether to write a title or leave it blank as a flyleaf. These days I just rip it straight out! It makes me feel happier that the book is not a precious great work but very much a creative work in progress and that crossings out, scribbles and missing pages are actually OK.

I also very much enjoy the process of capturing a dream using images and have used this on several occasions when I wanted to capture something quite large or vague, like a lifestyle I would like to lead.

First you need to find the largest piece of paper available (I have actually used four A3 sheets taped together in the past) and some glossy lifestyle / travel / fashion magazines, or whatever appeals to you. Flick through the magazines and cut out any picture that catches your eye but don’t censor anything at this stage. When you have your pile of images you might find it useful to sort them into categories eg: home, travel, work, personal style etc. It may be at this point that a little prudent editing may be useful if you have too many tropical paradise island pictures for example (can you really have too many?). Then just stick them all down on your large sheet of paper, again, this is not a precise art, overlapping and off the edges of the page are allowed.

I did this the first time in the summer of 2000. I was astonished several years later to stumble on it again and realise that all the images I had chosen had actually occurred in my life since. Even more spooky, one image showed a woman holding a small baby, standing next to a large window with folding shutters. I was wishing for the house that had such lovely Victorian features and, about 4 years later, I got the house. About a year after that I got the baby! Be careful what you wish for . . .

Try these ideas, see what flows and then tuck you writing and images away. You may be surprised how many have happened when you find them again.