"Life is what happens to you while you're busy
making other plans."
-- John Lennon
Last month I asked you how you can still feel okay
about yourself when a request comes along that will
pull you off the route to your dreams and you have
to say no. The question this month is how do you
say yes to that request and still feel okay
about
yourself?
There's not enough time.
A strange
thing happens when you pass the age of
forty. You start to realize that you don’t have
forever to fulfill your dreams. For me, and I would
bet that I’m not the only one this happens to, there
was a time of regret because I hadn’t believed in
myself enough to go for those dreams. It might have
been a lack of self-esteem that kept me from my
dreams. But
the delay may also have been
from other causes.
In some cases, we don’t stay on the path because
we have other lessons to learn. I needed to raise my
son so he could teach me the joys and pains of
motherhood. Can’t you look back over the last ten
(or twenty or thirty years) and see the lessons you
learned that you wouldn’t have if you had not done
exactly what you did? Aren’t you a deeper, more
intelligent person as a result? Maybe all of the
experiences were necessary for you to achieve what
you will in this next part of your life.
Whose dreams are these anyway?
In some cases, we don’t stay on the path because
the path really isn’t important to us. This is a harder
truth to accept. We get shoved into goals that
aren’t our own, but over years of being aimed in that
particular direction, we tend to believe those are our
goals. Then we feel guilty if we haven’t achieved
them. It’s one of the reasons why New Year’s
Resolutions are generally unsuccessful – they are
usually goals that are external to our real desires, or
are secondary ones. We may say we want to lose
20 pounds, but it’s not as important as spending our
time doing something other than exercising or not as
important as enjoying the foods we love.
The best thing we can do for ourselves is to
recognize what is really important to us. If you have
a dream that you say you really want to accomplish,
but you can’t seem to find the time, energy, money,
etc., to make it happen, you are not committed to
that dream. Plain and simple. Don’t beat yourself up
about it. It may be the wrong time (you need
additional experiences before you can realize it) or it
may just be the wrong dream (maybe it’s someone
else’s dream for you).
It's all about learning
If you have a tendency to despair over the time you
spent trying to focus on a dream that wasn’t yours,
remember this: You are who you are because of
everything that has happened in your life – the
amazingly wonderful experiences and the horribly
traumatic events, as well as the everyday seemingly
uneventful times. Every aspect of your life has
brought you to where you are right now. You have a
gift unlike anyone else on this planet because of your
experiences and the way you see and interpret those
events. There is a mission inside you, one you have
already started to realize. You know it’s there; you
just might not know what it is yet.
Give yourself some time to figure out what you really
want. Then aim full force, no holds barred toward
that dream.