Daring to dream

I didn't realize I had stopped dreaming.

When you've been practicing compromising or setting yourself aside for your entire life - maybe to keep the peace or to please others - it can be a long road back to get in touch with your needs and wants. I am a go with the flow kind of person. I don't like to stir the pot or rock the boat. But I started realizing that I was just as a coping mechanism as a personality trait. Yes I do like my peace and harmony. And my personality is pretty calm BUT a lot of my "going with the flow" was rooted in fear of rejection, disappointment or conflict and not an actual indifference in preference to whatever was going on. When I started realizing this I remember lying in my bed and really trying to envision or just feel what I could be passionate about in my future but to no avail. At the age of 37 i didn't know what i wanted in life. So I had to start from square one.

I came across someone on YouTube who suggested to test out hobbies and generally just try things and then form an opinion about it. So i started really small. One thing I did was deciding I preferred to bring my own coffee and not rely on instant coffee at my friend's house. This both trained my preference but also "inconveniencing" people. I also started listening and talking to others about vision.

A really good thing in this process is to find people and information that are not afraid to dream and have big visions. People that don’t see limitations but instead, opportunities - not to be blind to obstacles - but to embrace them and not kill the dream before it has even begun. If you think of a major corporation, business or ministry you admire - it seems impossible to do anything like that. But I’d bet you, if you look into how they started you would be amazed that they managed to get to where they are. Or think of the engineering or medical wonders that we have available to us today - we can hardly imagine a life without planes. But what if the Wright brothers has stopped at the first try and accepted that their dream was to big and impossible? I know there is a huge difference between choosing to pay attention to if you like your coffee and making humans fly, but my point is that if you don’t start paying attention to yourself and your dreams maybe you are depriving the world (or at least your family/neighborhood) of a solution to a problem they are facing. So claim a little space in this world and allow yourself to want something from life. Even if it comes with a risk of disappointment or you might be a slight inconvenience to the people around you.

You are allowed to take up space.