Month: May 2018

Can You Dream the Wrong Way?

May 29, 2018

What does dreaming actually do?

I dream, sure. I have bucket lists. I have visions of places I want to go, people I want to see, and moments I want to create. I was in a highly successful business for years where the entire motivation to grow was fueled by one catch phrase: dare to dream, so I did, and it worked. But I think I kinda did it wrong because I didn’t really want what I had.

Can you dream the wrong way?

I remember the stickiness of change in that business when things I could only dream about were starting to happen. I was travelling and staying in beautiful hotels with gifts left for me on the bed. I ate the most delicious things in five star restaurants, had fireside chats in great-rooms overlooking the desert and I was blessed to spend a week in Hawaii every year. This is what I never dreamed about but thought I was supposed to, so I did, and it happened.

It felt a lot like being in a space ship which is why I’m wrestling with the whole dreaming thing right now. I had to leave the roots of my life behind in order to ‘lift off’. I dreamt, I affirmed and I created. I remember walking down wide hotel hallways, stunningly dressed, on my way to attend another evening gala. I don’t remember feeling my feet touch the floor.

We say this about dreaming: ‘as if my feet never touched the ground’.

Today things are different yet I am living a dream for sure. Things are simpler. I live by the ocean in a beautiful home surrounded by nature. I wake up to the sound of birds and I fall asleep to the glow of the moon and stars. I am self-employed. I am blessed to make a living doing what I love. I am passionate about it. I am nourished spiritually by it. I create my schedule. My boys are healthy, happy and ridiculously funny. We eat on a long table outside on the deck in the summer and we snuggle up by the fire in the winter. This is a dream I never made a goal, though I felt my through to this experience since I was a little girl. I did not visualize this. I did not create affirmations either, I simply followed a feeling of home inside me. Sounds pretty good right? Yes, but I still think what I’m doing isn’t quite right because I can’t help but  notice how much effort it takes to keep this dream floating. I have many agreements, exchanges and structures within this dream.

We say this about dreaming: ‘there are no limits’.

As a child I would wake up to an orchestra of stories in my head. If thoughts were words, were music, were water, were warmth, were colour, that’s what I’m talking about. I woke up to inspiration all at once.  Some days I still do. I experience speckles of hope, fragments of beauty, shards of mystery and particles of fireworks in each moment. This ignites the impulses to move me forward. This is the dreaming that happens effortlessly. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, it’s just weird.

I’ve been called flighty, impulsive, frivolous, unbalanced, wild and, wait for it… a dreamer…

We say this about dreaming:  ‘a dream is a wish your heart makes’

I’m approaching 50 and as part of my #thisis50 series I am looking at a lot of things. Last Saturday I went to bed feeling quite sad and lonely. I had been moved during a film festival and had no one special to share my shards of inspiration with. But this is 50 (almost) so I didn’t go to the bar and try to meet someone. Nor did I go on a two hour walk in the dark to cry. I didn’t binge with a bag of cheesies and watch netflix, I didn’t do a lot of things I would’ve done in my 20s and 30s – not that this list is bad (no shame here), they just don’t change anything and neither does dreaming.

I went home. I felt sad. I layed in bed (kids were at their dad’s), and instead, started asking…

What do I want?

What do I see in that want?

What do I feel in that want?

How do I see me in that want?

What is this want?

All of this because earlier last week a friend told me a story about his mother asking him directly: What do you really want? -as if he could simply order it off the menu from the universe and it would be delivered. I noticed I never ask that of myself. I never ask what do you want?, because if I want something, I go get it so I rarely feel want, I just feel get instead. I think this might be the gap in dreaming I’m not doing right. This idea of asking for what I truly want feels foreign to me. I want that piece of cake or I want my son to be happy is not the same as I want to travel to New York and fall into the magic of theatre every year and get paid for it. While theatre season may mean nothing to you, to me it makes me want to laugh, cry and love at the same time, and that’s just ONE thing on my want list.

This is what I think:

A want is not a dream, but a dream without a want is just a wish. 

And that’s what Cinderella does. Remember… she’s fiction.

We say this about dreaming: Dreams don’t work unless you do.

So again, this mantra about effort, work, results and dreaming. Where is the sweet spot?

I’m three years from fifty and all I know is, it’s time to trust my kaleidescope approach to dreaming, the way I did before I knew what it was. As a child I would just see things inside first as I wanted them. I would feel things before I knew what they were, I’d follow that feeling and what I wanted appeared. I would hear words before the story arrived and solving the mystery would manifest the very thing I wanted.

I’m beginning to believe that dreaming is allowing myself to want something. Really really want something.

So from this place of really wanting, this is what I know so far:

I want to cycle in Europe, sleep in little Inns and drink wine at night. 

I want to travel to cultural birthplaces and listen to the stories that live there.   

I want to go to New York, London and drop in to Niagara annually for Theatre Season, like it’s just what I do. It’s not a trip, it’s my life. 

I want to touch spiritual symbols and listen to them.

I want a home, maybe a few. 

I want to meet as many beaches as I can. 

I want to own and drive a jeep. I know, it’s kinda cliché but I really want that. 

I want to Christmas with my family forever – as if Christmas is a verb and not a day on the calendar.

I want to swim the way I run – like my body just knows how to do it. 

I’m sure there is more, but this is the list I’m starting with. Don’t ask me about love and relationships yet. I have no idea. None. Zip. Zilch. I got nuthin’. Well, that’s not true. I’m just not ready to say them out loud yet. I’ll get there. Beauty, Love, Art, Adventure, Home, Health, and God. That’s all I know right now.

I think dreaming is wanting from the essence of how you are designed, and that’s another Story from the Core conversation.

So now it’s your turn. What do you want? 

Thanks for listening.

As we say here in Storyland, Listening is Loving. 

#thisis50

xxT

TinaO is a Writer, Story Coach, and Host of the TinaOShow, collecting and telling Stories from the Core. She’s the co-owner of The LEAP Learning Lab with Gina Best, and the other half of The Writer’s Compass with Meribeth Deen. She says: Stories are like toddlers, they will follow you around, tugging, hanging off of you until you listen to them.  TinaO is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening using writing, storytelling, nature, nourishment, art and connection as a way to listen to the personal story within. The retreat is held in various locations around the world, and is always offered 3x/year in British Columbia where she lives. All are welcome.
As always… let me know your thoughts. They’re always welcome.

This is Fifty with TinaO

May 27, 2018

This is 50. But I’m not quite there. I’m 47 and like every milestone, their whisperings begin around the 7 mark: 17 begins 20, 27 begins 30, 37 to 40 and now this, fifty. A half century.

I’m already blessed because I have made it this far.  In 1962 the average life expectancy was 65 which means a whole lot of people in my circle (even me) could’ve been dead by now fifty five years ago. In 2018, our average life expectancy for women in Canada is 83. I wonder what it will be in twenty years. I’m guessing closer to 95. If that’s the case, right now, (if all goes well) I’m probably at the half way point. In these moments I wonder… good gawd, what on earth am I going to live through next?

I suspect everyone has an approaching 50 list. Here’s mine:

At almost fifty I am:

  • Shocked to be soon divorced.
  • Overwhelmed by how many more years I am willingly and yes lovingly carrying my children as a single parent (another decade).
  • Aware, grateful and still a bit raw about a journey through cancer.
  • Kind of ashamed by the financial collapse of my life, now twice, both post a marital breakdown.
  • I forgot that part, I’m soon to be divorced twice. Ugh. Twice. I’m a statistic too.
  • Almost 50 and I’m pretty awed by my psychological and physical constitution. I have endured many stories and I still smile, just not all the time.
  • Appreciative of this body of mine which carried me through my first triathlon months post cancer (seriously, what was I thinking?). I’m astounded by what this body can do, and how I can recover.
  • I am kind of disssociated from the achievement because I don’t really understand how it all happened and where the motivation came from. Have you ever felt like that?
  • Heartbroken by the randomness of loss I know to be part of this thing called life.
  • Lost in my own romanticism of possibility.
  • Drowning while still breathing my almost-50 yearnings.
  • Blown and breathless by the mystery that is Love, Art and God.
  • Clear that I never need to be ‘saved’ by any one person again.
  • Solid to be my own hero yet deeply aware and moved by the knowing none of us are here to do this or be alone.
  • I am almost fifty.
  • I am my own hero, my own sunflower, my own carpet of magic, and my own story stone in the ocean.

And still,

Life kicks my ass sometimes, cracks my heart open so wide I swear my heartbeat meshes with the pulse of the sun, and life and all it’s messiness can bring me to my knees in utter helpless, and hopeless beauty.

This is 50.

If you’re familiar with my writing you’ll know ‘this’ is what I do. Something wild this way comes and ‘this’ is what it looks like when my story tells me. After coffee and scrolling through travel adventures online, followed by deliciously facebook messaging a dear friend across the globe with my findings, I began to scribble some thoughts on a big hunk of paper.

This is 50. I wrote.

And then ‘that’ impulse came. Gahhhhh the familiar nudge, push and shove forward I know so well. That feeling launched my first vlog series which tracked my journey post cancer through to the Vancouver 5i50 triathlon in 2016. I turned my computer on.

Welcome to my next series on TinaOLife.

This is 50.

I’m three years out from five-oh and closing an old story. In the work I do as a story coach, I call this swimming between ripples.

The visual I use is this: it’s as if we come in to this world as a story stone and are dropped into the water and who we are, or our story ripples out. Every circle is the next, expanded version of the first one. Every ring another layer of who we are.

Swimming between ripples is letting go of one to follow the ease of the next. I’m going to share this next journey with you. I’ll be posting regularly here.  This is 50 with TinaO.

As always…

Thanks for listening.

In storyland, listening is loving.

xxT.

TinaO is a Writer, Story Coach, and Host of the TinaOShow, collecting and telling Stories from the Core. She’s the co-owner of The LEAP Learning Lab with Gina Best, and the other half of The Writer’s Compass with Meribeth Deen. She says: Stories are like toddlers, they will follow you around, tugging, hanging off of you until you listen to them.  TinaO is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening using writing, storytelling, nature, nourishment, art and connection as a way to listen to the personal story within. The retreat is held in various locations around the world, and is always offered 3x/year in British Columbia where she lives. All are welcome.
As always… let me know your thoughts. They’re always welcome.