The Power of the Dream

Before I even did my first triathlon, I wanted to do an IRONMAN. After my first day of CrossFit last year, I wanted to compete in a CrossFit competition of some sort. That’s my latest shenanigan-dream. And I don’t give a flip about saying it. Why? Because I know the power of a Dream. I have experienced the miracle of dreaming big, working hard, and checking off the boxes–over and over again. Dreams are not without stupid amounts of work, sweat, heartache. But the POWER of a dream? Well, it’s everything. So many times we forget to dream, to create dreams, to have huge and scary-big aspirations. We fail to develop these dreams that are our own—not the kid’s or another family member’s.  We forget to even think about the life, the goals that we want. Or even worse– if we do dream, we ignore those dreams or say, “I could never.” We push them down, laugh them away, and shrink a little more. We are terrified. By our own excuses, we stall at making our own dreams come true. In order to make dreams something more than just fleeting words, we must discover (or re-discover) what our dreams are… and then make the pursuit of these dreams an actual priority. Dreams are the things we will be glad we did at the end of life. Dreams are what keeps us going.  Dreams are the things that mean we are ALIVE.  Dreams are the things we think about and wish for. So many of us forget to dream at all–or we are scared to dream because the dreams are big, or it will take forever to reach them. But guess what?  The time is going to pass anyway. Might as well dream–and make those dreams a priority. The common theme I see in women, especially moms, is once the kids and marriage/partnership occurs, the dreams we once had are often dumped in the trash. As if to say: No more time for these shitty dreams. When will I be able to do these things, the kids are always needing me! I give up. I’ll eat this pizza, drink this wine and hope my husband doesn’t try to touch my disgusting body tonight. When did our dreams die? When did we become disgusting? When did this happen? I swear to God, it happens overnight and we have no idea it even occurred until one day we don’t recognize the reflection in the mirror or the voice coming out of our mouths. Digging deep and discovering our dreams, our purpose and what we want is what brings us back to ourselves. When we are on fire towards a dream, we begin to know ourselves. Maybe again. Maybe for the first time. We recognize the voices coming out of our mouths. Even better than that, we begin to impress ourselves. We do things to make ourselves calmer, more peaceful, happier. We don’t notice what others are thinking. We care more about what we think. We tolerate less nonsense, less drama. We find power and more strength than ever. That is the power of the Dream. The Dream is necessary. The Dream is part of change. The Dream is the thing we must find in order to wake up and create change in ourselves, our lives… and beyond. What is YOUR dream?