Step One: Kill Your dream ( It's the only way to save it.)
A couple of months ago, I was speaking with a co-worker who was telling me about his teenage daughter's passion for becoming a doctor for horses and living on a ranch in Wyoming. She loved horses and loved riding them and caring for them. He listened as she described the perfect ranch she would like to work on someday. As many parents do when they hear their child's dreams, he thought of a way she could take steps now to achieve her dream of getting to that ranch. They had some friends who had some horses in Littleton CO, not far from where they lived. He suggested that maybe she might begin by volunteering to help on their ranch and get some experience working with the horses.
"Dad," She responded, "I don't want to start there! That would ruin my dream!"
As I heard this response, I realized how true this statement really was! She was right! Working with real horses day after day at a particular time and place would definitively kill her dream and make it her reality.
This story gets to the essence of any creative work. Do you want the ideal or the real? Do you want the fantasy or the truth? Do you want the perfect or the good?
There are immutable, universal laws that we have to contend with to realize our dreams. These laws are based on the inherent limitations of people, resources, time, and space. In clashing with these realities, we come to see our own attachments, arrogance, and pride. If we allow these laws to inspire a more profound journey of growth, their pure form as divine gifts will emerge, killing our dreams by helping to make them a reality.
With this in mind I'd like to submit to you two ways you can kill your dreams:
1. Passively 2. Actively.
Kill your dream passively: Dreams die when they succumb to circumstances
I want to introduce you to a very unfamiliar word in the English language; "Velleity." Velleity comes from the Latin word "velle," which means "to wish." Velleity is the lowest form of volition. It means "to wish something without any plan to achieve it, passively." A statement of velleity usually starts with "wouldn't it be great if…" or "One of these days, I'm going to…" Velleity will always keep your dreams safe because they will never become a reality. You will never run a marathon. You will never take that vacation. You will never play that instrument until you master your velleity with one magic word: "When?"
Since we don't ask the "When-question," time will naturally kill that dream because your schedule will happen to you, or your bills will come due, and your habits will take over. You'll go back to your job, or you will sleep in again because you stayed up too late watching Netflix. Or in business, you didn't make that call, didn't make that meeting. Asking "When" is the first step in building a plan, so if we have an idea without a plan, time and money will make your decisions, not you.
If you want to kill those pesky dreams of yours, accept that you are never going to do them, grieve them, and let them go. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I think everyone right now may have some dreams that need to die passively! At the time of this writing, I'm letting go of my "vellatious" idea of being a social media influencer. I'm letting this go so the dreams I care more about can have a fighting chance! So find those half-assed dreams of yours and kill! Kill! Kill!
Kill your dream actively: Dreams die when they become a reality.
Maybe you've decided that you're not ready for that one special idea to go yet. Perhaps you have a hunch that this dream of yours holds some secret to your identity and purpose. Maybe this dream keeps you awake at night with its siren song is calling you…into the UNKNOWN!! (Sorry, I just saw Frozen 2 with Dayli, forgive my dramatic burst.)
Then it is time, ask, "When."
"When" begins to move you in a direction that is time-bound. "When" is the beginning of a plan. Here is an important distinction: the first question is not "How." "How" is about problem-solving, and if you start with "how" you will seldom get to "when."
When will you sign up for the Marathon?
When will you begin training?
When is your first guitar performance?
When does rehearsal start and end?
Once you ask "when" question, the "how" question begins to solve itself! If you decide you want to run the Boston Marathon in 2 years, then the next question you ask is, "how many miles do I run now?" not "how much is a ticket to Boston?"
Another vital question when it comes to making your dream a reality is "who." Who is your "dream killer?"
I'm not sure what this label means to you, but to me, "dream-killer" refers to a person who's default posture toward imagination is resistance. The so-called "dream killers" have been so disappointed or hurt by their desires that have weaponized their pain into resentment toward anyone that has the enthusiasm to try something untested and new. Although these people do exists, and you should do everything in your power to stay away from them, I have a feeling, however unfounded, that there are fewer of these people than we think. There are instead a much larger group of people who are tragically labeled "dream killers" that are actually "dream-makers" in disguise.
These people are called "dream killers" because their super-power is anticipating the sink-holes and dead-ends on the road before the "dreamers" do. This group of leaders can assess the threats to a creative project or "crazy dream" accurately and keep those dreamers from running off the cliff or emptying the bank account on some idea that cannot be realized within a given set of limitations.
Some of you may know that I'm a dreamer. I have a lot of enthusiasm for imagination and new ideas. My personal process depends on a lot of iteration and plenty of failures, but without my few trusted advisors who are willing to kill the dreams that need to be killed, I can make a lot of noise and do nothing!
In the metaphor of a car, I would be the gas and the radio, essential, yes, but useless without other vital components. Because I'm a human like everyone else, I have an ego, and in the process of maturing, my ego has had to contend with the reality that not everyone thinks like me. Not only are people different from me, but I depend on others to become my most authentic and most creative self. I have been blessed to have a few "dream-makers" in my life who have enough patience and care for me to tell me when dreams need to die or change. This is often not too painful, but it certainly involves confrontation and conflict. This truth is always revealed in conflict, and there is just no other way of coming to deeper levels of "knowing."
I'm grateful now (even if I wasn't in the moment) for the people in my path that have challenged me, pushed me, questioned me, and thwarted me. They tether me to a reality that I often want to escape, and they have helped me see that the true path to freedom is not by escape but by engagement.
With the support and guidance of your "dream-makers," you will slowly live your way into your dream. You wouldn't even realize the day it arrives because it is the day to day reality you are living. You don't become a runner after you finish running a marathon. You become a runner every day you run.
You don't become a writer when you complete your 5th book.
You are a writer when you spend your day writing.
There is no other reward.
There is no certificate.
There is only a new set of complexities to tackle, questions to answers, and decisions to make. This is the dream!
To keep playing and dreaming new dreams!
To keep creating new solutions!
To keep living new experiences!
I will leave you with the words of one of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, and his encouraging insight on what living into your dreams looks like:
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."