4 Surprising Reasons to Dream even if they do not come true

I have been thinking lately about the journey I’ve been on – where I am in life vs the way I envisioned it.  I realize how little things look exactly like I thought they would.  I have always had a vivid imagination.  I can envision details in my head for the future as if they’re real – they are crystal clear details.  It’s interesting, though, how few of the things I envisioned became reality to the exact level of detail I imagined it. For example, I had vivid imaginations way before I ever got pregnant that my daughter would have red hair.  However, that, like many of my visions, did not become so.

When I first started my business back in the summer of 2008, another business owner told me about a space that had opened up for a small business in an old historic three-story 1920s home in uptown Dallas.  I was convinced to rent a room up in the attic of that old home only a few months after I had officially “opened” my business doors, just before the market tanked that year.

 The reason I got so excited about this little office space is because it was an attic with two rooms on either side of its old rickety staircase. One of the rooms had a closet converted into a viewing space with a one-way mirror. Not because the owner was creepy but because she was a child counselor and utilized her space years ago for her practice.

So, I got big ideas that in this down market in 2008, I was going to conduct cost effective “quick and dirty” focus groups on a dime.  Looking back on that now, I’m not really sure why I thought it was a good idea to believe marketing teams of Fortune 100 companies would want to conduct marketing research, trekking up 3 flights of stairs to a small space where they all had to fit into a tiny closet to watch the groups.  Even in the down market of 2008, I’m not seeing now what I saw then.

Approximately 2 people could fit in that tiny viewing closet comfortably, but I didn’t concern myself with those “tiny” details. I could see it, I could vision doing focus groups there.

 I bought desks, a conference style table, six chairs at IKEA along with a cute little “waiting room” chair -  all on a $500 budget  - and I started telling everyone who would listen about it. I got so excited that I created a brochure about my space trying to market how easy it would be to conduct focus groups there. Well, fast forward 17 years and I never held one damn focus group there. 

I’m telling you the story for 3 reasons:

1.     The Dream hasn’t changed:  I still have a dream today to conduct group sessions and empathy interviews in my own space. And now I know that it doesn’t have to look like I thought it would. In fact, now it could just look like having a green screen behind me and being able to pull together people on a zoom call.  I still believe I could realize a dream to have my own space for small focused group interactions. 

2.     The Dream moves You forward: Having the dream moved me forward with a lot of amazing opportunities that were better than what I could have imagined.  Because I was excited about what I was doing, I was able to pick up clients I had never dreamed of working with.  And the path offered a direction that propelled me forward to realize many beautiful experiences that may not have happened if I had not chosen to create an office space in that little attic space…. with a big dream.

3.     Our Dreams are Ours - they are our soul’s knocking on the door of our brains saying “don’t forget that I’m here.”  The intuition you have inside of you about what your heart desires is data, it is truth.  No one has to validate what is inside of you, it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.  It’s our job alone to unite our head and heart together to refine, work with, and act on our dreams. It is our freedom to do that – to choose our dreams or not.

4.     Our Dreams increase our Empathy for others– believe it or not, exercising the “muscle” of imagination helps us see and feel what it might be like for others.  When we can imagine another world other than our own, especially when it’s very different that our current reality, we are better able to empathize with others in a new way.  One of my favorites, Angela Duckworth, speaks about a “debate” she had on this subject here.

As you dare to dream, to imagine, remember that imagination does not originate from the same place as fear. How you execute that dream eventually may shift alter and change. While I never realized the dream of doing focus groups in that small attic space, I know that because I started dreaming about it, it actually lifted me to a place where I could handle the many rejections and confused looks when I suggested we should do focus groups in a hot Texas attic closet with a small one-way mirror.  

 My dreams allowed me to carry on because I could see it so clearly. It takes space and willingness to look under the covers to pick your dreams back up. I encourage you to do that as I’m encouraging myself to do that these days.  I have ben re-learning the act of using my imagination. 

How does the voice talking inside your head make you feel?  If you are feeling fear, anxiety, worry, stress as you dream, notice that.

And notice the difference in how that feels vs. when you feel alive, excited, hopeful, driven. These feelings can serve as a guide as your’e honing your vision. 

It will help you uncover which voice is talking – the fear voice or the voice of your soul. 

Then choose which voice makes you feel better.

There’s a reason that Step 2 in our Empathy Co-Creation™ process is “Imagine” – it’s because it propels you forward allowing you to become empathetic to yourself and others as you enter into the unknown “messy middle” of whatever you’re creating.

If you’re interested in learning more about our tools to help you develop a powerful vision, you can sign up for our email list here.

How Empathy Can Help You Create Big Change When You’re in the “Messy Middle”

Here we are in what Brené Brown calls “Day 2” in her Unlocking Us podcast.  She refers to it as the intense “in between.”  The time after the die has been cast - we are past the point of no return.  

There’s a glaze that has formed again over our initial raw feelings that burst forth back in March when COVID hit and rippled shock through us all. Now I notice emotional cover-up again, like how caulking and a fresh coat of paint can close up the cracks where the foundation has shifted - both in my own emotions and what I see on Facebook and other social media.

In place of the heartfelt emotions I saw at the beginning of our pandemic when everything was raw, I now see pointing of fingers. I see how hard it is for us all to be with our own emotions.

Ironically, I see this in myself even though I spent the greater part of the summer writing about emotions.  I took a group of beta testers through this process I call Empathy Co-Creation™ - giving them tools to help unearth emotions to harness their energy and power to create more of what matters in their life. 

Brené talks about Day 2 being not only the messy middle but also where the magic happens.  She references that this is more than just what she sees in her own practice but also a theme in most storytelling, described as Act 2.  I found a great article here that describes Day 2 as “The Protagonist’s Arc.” This messy magic happens because it’s the point of transformation - when the protagonist is willing to be vulnerable and ask for help, recognizing that we can’t do it alone.  

I resonate with this so much – not only from a broader perspective due to the heaviness of COVID, racial injustice, climate issues and more, but also in the way I see creation happen time after time, project after project when going through the process. 

It corresponds to the way I have laid out the Empathy Co-Creation framework of my course – the Discover & Blend modules in the process are what I would call “the messy middle.” 

And it’s also where I find myself now – I’ve written what I know, and I find myself in this in-between phase.  Vacillating between wanting to put it on a shelf and just push it forward, knowing there’s still more for me to uncover.  Knowing that I must be willing to dig deep myself… I must be vulnerable and ask for help to get through the middle.  I’m seeing that we, that I, can’t skip the middle. 

I have this unique vantage point of having a job where its purpose is to excavate, understand, explore, investigate and finally create from a “mess” of information.  To make it mean what it needs to mean – to create by marrying heart data with ideas and vision. I have explored what people want in depth for the purpose of creating solutions based on emotional needs.

I’ve spent thousands upon thousands of hours writing specific discussion guides, conducting focus groups, drawing templates to facilitate conversations around the emotional landscape of various categories. Whether for toilet paper, how people care for their hair, what foods they like to eat and why or how they shop for their pets.

And I began thinking a couple years ago about, if we could create products and services in mass based on people’s emotions, why can we not use the same methodology to create solutions for the good by internally reflecting on and being with our own and others’ emotions with more empathy.

My job, at least professionally, is to sit and listen with complete detachment and only curiosity to what someone’s telling me and to probe further in order to understand from their perspective what reality looks like for that person. 

And when I am tuned into who this person is and what their reality is without judgment and only curiosity, my ego, my fear, my amygdala falls to the back seat and instead, honors the prefrontal cortex with which creation occurs. I believe that if these skills can be utilized to harness our own emotions in depth and/or the emotions of others in a way that creates powerful transformation, the divisiveness, conflicts, judgment, defensiveness will rest.

It will step aside because we will be in a state of creating with and for each other. Now I know this sounds quite unreasonable considering where we are, but I also know that it works. I know it works because I am paid well to do this very thing for the purpose of creation, and I have watched the fruits of my labor manifest into extreme abundance for those who are able to create from it.

It is time that we all stop judging each other.  It is time to start getting curious. Just start listening.  For when we slow down, get curious, and listen to another’s heart, our own heart shifts, and the judgment chains we are trapped in start to loosen a little. 

I also recognize the irony it has been for me to be an “expert” in empathy interviewing and yet have been shut off to my own emotions for so many years. The life changes I’ve been through the last few years have created a new recognition about how challenging it is to be empathetic when we either believe strongly about something or we care deeply for someone. And even greater a challenge still for many of us, is to be self-empathetic. 

Ironically our beliefs we emotionally care about the most can keep us from accessing our empathy. And what is empathy? Empathy is the catalyst, the connection to compassion if you let it be. It is the tool that moves us from our mind and into our hearts. I developed an Emotional Landscape framework as a part of this course I wanted to share here. I like frameworks.  And because there is so much being written about emotions these days, I needed to create a new way to think about emotions in a context that I know works.

This framework is through the lens of creation and control – along the horizontal axis are emotions that either keep you “stuck”(the far left side) or have “momentum” (the far right) while the vertical axis are emotions that help put you in a state of “in control” (top) or “out of control” (bottom).  When we can uncover what’s really going on inside us emotionally and why, and shift to what is desired, we can become more creative and feel more in control. 

When anyone, especially a group, comes together in a space of creative control, magic happens. Products are made. Strategy is developed. Things change in a massive way.

But back to the messy middle.  Here is some of the feedback on my course from my initial testers:

1.     My course could be possibly better served if it was pulled out of the linear framework and more into buckets or themes

2.     It would be good to have almost a recipe or cookbook so that people can utilize the different tools based on where they are in their creative process or what they are trying to create.

3.     Consider tailoring to people based on “what” they’re trying to create -  whether it’s a small or large change or a certain area of life, something specific (a new career) or general (a new attitude).  

4.     I have been focused on the “how to” (empathy) instead of the “benefits of” empathy. 

So will you help me customize my course so that it’s better suited for all of these factors?  I now have a better understanding of some of the “benefits” of empathy – how my empathy tools can actually benefit others.  And I have a link here (and below) to a survey so I can now do for myself what I’ve been doing for others – better analyze what benefits matter most and to whom?  If you’re interested in me bringing this to life, can you click the link and take the survey for me? All questions are optional – you can answer what you feel comfortable with. 

I’ve been reluctant to put these ideas out into the world until I feel more confident it will be a game changer.  So much of what I’ve done over the years - creating tools processes questions etc. have all been customized for specific project objectives.  I’m wanting to now categorize what I’ve been working on for years in a way that can help leaders in their personal and professional endeavors in a way that is the most meaningful and can create the most change.

I want successful affluent leaders to be able to dig in below the surface to harness their power, their creative energy, to help them create more of what really matters in their lives.

Here’s a link to a quick survey – if you’re interested in this idea moving forward, would you be so kind to tell me what you want to create and where you are in the creative process?

Regardless, I hope you’re keeping well in this messy middle.  That you’re finding hope – that there are moments at least where you live in the top right quadrant above and you are finding your way back on solid ground.  I believe we are going to get there, and that what we are learning along the way will stay with us when we do. 

6 Affirmations for Transformation in the Unknown

I listened last night to Mel Robbins Instagram video post of her morning routine.  And after seeing it, I recognized the value of sharing mine too.  Often, I refrain from sharing because of one of the following reasons:

1. Feeling not good enough.  I ask myself questions like, “What do I have to share that others would want to know about?”  

2. Worry that others will criticize me - for some element of my thinking they disagree with.  I watch others who are sharing their feelings online and see how easy it is to get land blasted virtually. 

3. But more than anything, I think it’s shame – shame for feeling as if I “have” more than others.  I feel guilt when I think about how much I have been blessed with and often worry about being perceived as a “show off” so I lessen myself, minimize who I am.  I worry about jealousy of others. 

I see that clearly now - I have been frightened of other’s jealousy for much of my life.  Fear of being judged for being “too much”, “too over the top” so I reduce in order to be loved.

This COVID-19 has taught me that any fear, no matter how or where it creeps in, creates a “hiding place” for me to live in silence.  But I don’t want to hide anymore.  Because hiding brings me down.  As much as I want others to lift me up, to get me, I understand more now than ever, that I am the only one who has to approve of me. 

The more I approve of myself, the more I am willing to show up authentically, hoping that by sharing who I am, others might find a glimmer of hope.  I weigh the risk of hurt and criticism with the reward of vulnerability and being brave, and I can see that when I let go of my own fear, I can return to hope.  Now more than ever, I grasp for “hope moments” each day.

So, here’s hoping this story will instill a bit of hope. 

January this year, a friend of mine and I attended Rachel Hollis’ Rise Conference in Fort Myers, Florida.  That feels like a lifetime ago.  One of my biggest actionable take-aways was to use the “Start Today” journal she gave us in our goodie bags. The premise of the journal is to begin each day with writing 3 things:  

1. 5 Gratitude statements

2. 10 “Dreams”

3. 1 Goal to Focus on

Each page has the same format – repeat, repeat. When I returned on January 11, I began and haven’t missed a day (actually, I think I missed 1 day) since then.   It was an interesting exercise for me.  As a self-help junkie, I have been through numerous programs including Landmark, Tony Robbins, and countless others, but this was an interesting, repetitive way to create clarity, vision, and focus all at once. 

It reminded me of the Stephen Covey days where in my early 20’s, I used the “planner” to help me focus on goals.  Since then, I’ve used countless goal and planner systems, and haven’t found anything that worked quite as well as that.  But when I started this practice, an unexpected shift happened.

 Many of my goals were regarding work and dreams for my business, but the one goal closest to my heart, the one I chose to focus on was: 

• Migrate my daughter to a school where she will thrive holistically (socially, emotionally, academically, physically). 

What this process of gratitude, dreaming, then focusing did was allow me to bring from my subconscious to my conscious what I had been procrastinating on.  I knew in my heart it was time for her to move, and I guess I was waiting to “prove it” to myself.

After about a week of writing this, I finally stopped procrastinating and began taking action toward the large project before me of discovering, researching and exploring schools – which is quite a feat if you live in Dallas county. 

What I didn’t realize at the time is that it had been awhile since I had been clear about what I wanted to do for myself (rather than for others) and this process gave me the clarity I needed.

Suddenly, I got into Post-it creation land , created a large visual board so she could understand the concept of “discovering without deciding” and moved her from resistance to excitement about learning something new, unknown. 

What I realized as I went down this journey is that just a small action toward what you want when you have total clarity on what it is keeps you grounded and in your truth no matter what others say about or to you. 

A few patterns I discovered along the way and some affirmations I wrote to combat some old beliefs and to keep with me for the future:

1. Inner Strength in Resistance – I was shocked at how others resisted my desire for my child, wanting to insert their opinions about what they believed was best for me, and my child.  I learned that their opinion was just that, an opinion, and it didn’t have to be mine.  I discovered that if I give myself permission, I can trust myself instead of looking outside of me for validation.

   • Affirmation #1:  I am the expert and authority on me and my child.

2. Grace in Letting Go – On the other hand, I learned how much I want others to understand MY opinion about something this important to me.  I wanted others to go on my journey with me, hold my hand, see me, understand me, and I have had to let go of expecting anyone else to take my journey with me…and it’s damn hard to do that with grace.  Some days I did better than others.

   • Affirmation #2:  I am willing to let go of that which doesn’t serve me and focus on what does.

3. Synchronicity is For Real (replace synchronicity for God, or magic, or whatever your personal flavor of this is) – I like God Magic because that’s what it feels like to me but I soften it to synchronicity for those who may have issue with the use of 1) God 2)Magic or 3) Both being in the same phrase.  The events that began occurring due to my initial efforts were mind blowing, and way beyond my control, leading me down a path of discovering:

   • a Gifted & Talented diagnostician,

   • a learning diagnosis called Twice Exceptional ,

   • a lot about misdiagnosed ADHD from a book called The Mislabeled Child and other things such as vision processing disorder, auditory processing disorder and multisensory processing disorder.

   • There’s also something you can do to help: vision therapy

   • the perfect school for my daughter - EA Young

   • Affirmation #3:  I consistently show up and do my part – get clear and take a step - and trust the rest to God Magic.

4. All Boats Lift When the Tide Rises – interestingly enough, the focus on that one goal actually manifested into another dream on my “10 dreams list” with synchronicity.  My dream to one day own a home with enough space for a horse and “event barn” presented itself.  Upon locking on the school that was a perfect fit for her, I realized it would require a move and started taking small actions to find a real estate agent who knew the area.  This turned a dream (after years of many failed attempts) into a reality and is now being brought to life.

   • Affirmation #4: I focus on what’s most important to me right now and trust that all else will be done in right timing.

5. Not All Animals are the Same – I have spent much of my life perceiving all people to be “the same” – through my lens.   It’s probably like being in a zoo – if you’ve been caged with the same “kind” of animal for years, you don’t realize some animal species act quite different than others. As I decided to let go of some of the people I was trying to get approval from – those who struggled to lift me up as I grew (the crabs in my life), and willing to venture forth, it wasn’t long until I realized there ARE other zoo animals, ones I never knew existed.  I am getting to know the mighty elephants  in my life more deeply, and meeting more of them! The journey feels better amidst reciprocal relationships.

   • Affirmation #5: I am powerful and strong, and I support others who are willing to live in their power and strength.

6. More Goodies = More Growth – stepping into this process doesn’t mean my life is perfect, or worry-free.  It actually feels the opposite most days. Every day I commit to doing what feels way too hard, brave, terrifying, I get to meet new challenges and show up again, humbly nodding at the opportunity before me, forgiving the past, and hoping I can embrace the new mistakes I’ll make with grace.

   • Affirmation #6: I welcome new growth with grace and grit.

Now, we are close to closing on a new house in a new town, a new place, in a new school, during COVID-19 with people we are yet to know.  And I will continue to breathe, be grateful for, dream, step and pray through it all, sometimes with eyes closed and other times with eyes wide open.

I welcome getting the next perfect family in my current home.  While these are all new challenges I am working through, COVID-19 style, I have a renewed hope in this process.  Because I can see from my experience that when the tide rises, it’s a much better view - of surprising beauty, and yes pain. Even if I’m bleeding a little and have been knocked around some days, I prefer it to drifting.  Come play with me, lovelies.  Come rise with me, please.  It’s so much more fun to do this with others than alone.  You are not alone.