Face Your Dreams

We don’t really talk about facing our dreams, do we? We nurture them, but how often do we make them happen?

Dreams – the execution of them, of bringing them to fruition – are scary.

But imagine your life if you got past your fears. We all have fears. Admitting that is half of the solution

You’re not alone. We sabotage our own dreams in so many ways.

We fear embarrassment – it’s often referred to as Imposter Syndrome. Are we good enough? Do we have the right to be doing what we’re doing? For would-be authors, this is a real killer.If we admire someone who’s gotten the success we hope for, we worry about comparisons. Or we make our own. For me, I used to wonder how I could ever write as well as the authors I loved to read.Sometimes our fears come from past traumas. As a child I used to be much more outgoing and didn’t mind getting up in front of my classes to deliver a speech project – until during one of them, the roll-down map I was using snapped back up suddenly, leapt out of its brackets and tumbled down onto my head. So mortifying at that age! That was followed by a prop mishap while I was on stage during one of my high school variety shows, which ended up flashing my panties to the entire auditorium. I literally crawled off-stage behind the backdrop. Luckily the audience thought it was all planned and that they’d seen me in a bikini bottom. But after that, I became a wallflower for years until I joined Toastmasters.The belief systems we grew up with can also be limiting if we allow them. I graduated from university and entered the workforce at a time when men dominated it and women weren’t supposed to do anything more than be secretaries – I even had a guy the same age as me comment that he’d never ever work under a female boss.It’s ridiculous how often we entertain negative thoughts about our own self-worth, instead of positive thoughts. (If you want to read a good book on that subject, I recommend The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.)We often tie those ideas of self-worth to our perception of how much we have or haven’t accomplished, usually with a self-imposed timeline that we haven’t met. I turned each decade birthday determined to have written my novel by then, but didn’t. At a certain point I began to think that perhaps it was now too late, that if I hadn’t done it by then, I never would.

And yet, here I stand (actually, sit, tapping away on my laptop), having not only written, but published, two of the three novels of my trilogy. Hot damn! My books will soon be on the shelves of our local library, a place I used to haunt regularly as a child and teen, reading voraciously.

Imagine your life if you got past your fears.

So how do we conquer those fears and start pursuing the dreams in our heads?

Well, first you have to come to terms with the fact that everyone you admire was a beginner once. No one ever becomes an instant expert. If you want to face your fears, understand that being a beginner is actually a good thing. Embrace a beginner’s mind! Open yourself to learning as much as you can about whatever you want to pursue. You have so much freedom at this stage, if you only drop any expectations or worries about what the future will bring. The future will resolve itself at some point.

Then it’s time to step outside your comfort zone. We call it a “comfort” zone because it’s comfortable, safe, reliable. But frankly, nothing changes inside it. No fears were ever overcome, no progress made, no dreams fulfilled in that space. Baby steps are okay, though. My hubby and I have travelled the world, but we didn’t become that confident and adventurous until we had some smaller trips under our belt. With each step outward, we became better and better at it. People asked us how we could go on safari in Africa by ourselves, joining a group of people we didn’t know, but to us that wasn’t a stretch – we’d been doing it for years.

“If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” Martin Luther King Jr.

It might be time for you to change your beliefs about what failure actually means. Every successful person that you might want to emulate will have some failure stories on their journey. Failure isn’t “the enemy” – it’s one of our best teachers. I have a great colleague in the small business group I’m part of, Julie Stobbe, who’s an expert organizer; she told us that with every ‘failure’ she’d experienced, she learned what not to do next time. That’s valuable information to have.

Author J.K. Rowling, one of my personal inspirations, had her first novel rejected twelve times before a literary agent finally agreed to take her on. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has now, on its own, sold over 120 million copies, never mind the other books in the series, the movies, the ‘lands’ at Universal Studios, and coming soon even a baking competition show, Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking (debuting November 14th).

Now, weigh all the pros and cons of your venture.

It might help to write down all your fears – greatly therapeutic, and once they’re down on paper, they’ll likely decrease in magnitude.Think about the various ways your dream might play out; we often worry about some nebulous worst-case scenario that never happens. The worst thing that might happen would be someone saying “no” – not the end of the world. If the worries are financial, approach it in stages; figure out what you can handle in increments. Once we start on a dream, the universe has an interesting way of making things happen. But you have to take those first steps.Talk to people who’ve already done whatever your dream holds. When my hubby asked me where I’d like to travel for our 10th anniversary, I said Egypt, as I’d been fascinated by its ancient civilization since I was a kid. He had reservations because the Middle East has been a powder-keg in varying degrees for decades. So, a friend of ours asked friends of his, who’d been to far more countries than Mike and I will likely ever manage, including Egypt, to talk to us about it. By the end of that evening, Mike’s concerns were allayed, and a few months later, using the same travel company they had, we had one of the most amazing trips of our lives.

Control what you can. Our fears usually rear their ugly heads when we feel loss of control, so here’s what you can do: a) research, and b) prepare. Remember, no one starts out as an expert. When hubby and I went to see the animals in Africa the first time, we chose to do a camping safari because it fit more in our price range – but neither of us had ever actually camped. So, I conducted a lot of research about what conditions were going to be like (e.g. no electricity in the camps, meaning we had to think about how we were going to recharge camera batteries, etc.), what preventative medications we needed to take (standard inoculations for travel to exotic countries, malaria pills – best resource is the CDC Travelers’ Health website), what to pack, how to stay safe in a wild environment… All that planning paid off, and it became another amazing, milestone trip in our lives. I still remember the first night in camp, in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, lying in our tent cots under the vast African sky. It was exhilarating beyond words!

Our first tent in the African bush – photo by E. Jurus, all rights reserved

It’s up to you to show your fear who’s boss.

As you go along, you learn how to adjust on the fly. Learn to embrace the unexpected – the better you get at it, the more fun it is. Okay, don’t snicker – it really is fun. On our trips, our best times have been completely unscripted. You just have to keep your head, your flexibility, and a sense of humour. One of these days, having had many requests, I’ll write a book about our travel adventures and all the crazy, wonderful things that have happened.

Experience is the other great teacher.

Finally, recognize the cost of NOT trying. When I engaged to try and write 50,000 words during my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2020, the main thought in my head was: I don’t want to reach 80 years of age and realize that it’s too late, and that I wish I’d at least tried. What was the worst that could happen – that what I wrote was a piece of garbage? If so, no one would ever see it and I’d have wasted no more than a month. But it wouldn’t have actually been a waste, you see: I’d have given it a shot. If it wasn’t meant to be, so be it, but if I hadn’t tried, I’d never have found out if I could have done it, have achieved a very long-held dream of writing a complete novel. I didn’t even care if I ever published it – I just wanted to write the damned thing.

And lo and behold, I wrote more than 50,000 words (officially making me a NaNoWriMo Winner), then I wrote many more chapters, then at the end of the following July I typed “The End”. That was a breathtaking feeling – and then, when I tentatively put it out there for some beta readers to take a look at, they actually liked it. Hallelujah! Then I began to entertain thoughts about publishing it – and in May 2023 I held the official Book Launch Party. My book was available on Amazon – my name, my words.

After that, writing the second book was in many ways a piece of cake, because now I had the confidence that comes from being a published author with great reviews.

Book 3 is the toughest to write, because I have to create the finale my readers deserve, the payoff for their faith in reading the first two novels. There are plot lines to resolve, justice to mete out to the bad guys (or not – you’ll have to read it to find out ), and a climax that will make your heart pound and your brain go ‘ahhhh’. But I’m enjoying the journey.

So here’s the thought I want to leave you with:

How will you know what you’re capable of, if you don’t try?

Be brave. Face your dreams and make them happen. It will rock your world.

“Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.” Suzy Kassem, poet