Goals Archives - TinaOLife

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.

I’m Walking… Still Walking…

January 15, 2016

Goals stink so says I. Why? Because you can’t just order them off a menu like they don’t belong to you. In order for them to work, they have to mean something. While placing your mouth watering want with the waiter in front of you might feel like a big deal – the reality is once the food is gone so is the meal.

A goal has to has to be rooted in a yearning in order for you to keep going. Lets face it, none of us would tread through snow up to our knees with our cheeks, ears and nose screaming cold from the wind, unable to see more than three feet in front of us if we didn’t believe that the promised warm cabin just 100 metres away wasn’t really there. We just wouldn’t do it – well, we wouldn’t do it by choice.

Goals are choices.

Goals are destinations.

Goals are stakes in the earth, in our mind, and on our calendars.

Goals are decisions.

This morning I set a bunch of mine in motion because I put them to the page. I’ve been self-employed for almost three decades and goals make me nauseous and angry now, yet try as I might I can’t seem to ditch the word. When I pick up my pen and my auto-pilot goal-setter kicks in, she writes: My Goal for TinaOLife…. My Goal for LYBS…. My Goal for my Network Marketing Business… My Goal for Me…

Man oh man… I just can’t ditch the word goal even though I don’t believe in them.

I believe in story.

I believe in walking.

I believe in direction fueled by a yearning.

and then I walk. as I listen. as I follow and lead, and move in the direction of the story of which I’ve chosen to be the main character.

I just keep walking.

Where do you walk? Why? Do you care? Are you willing to?

xxT

Yearnings Ignite, Goals Fade

January 9, 2016

We’ve all done it: Set a goal. Some of us have even reached that goal, but most of us don’t, or we do but it takes longer than it should, or we kinda get there, or when we do get there we wonder: What was all that fuss was about?

I’m a recovering goal setter because I’ve been a firey one for years. Oh man how I love both January and September. Mmmmmm cracking open a fresh journal, plotting out my quiet time to map out what I’m doing next, buying a new pen or finding just the right one with the best tip… oh boy. Who needs sex when you have goals? Truly, it’s weirdly almost that good for me. Did you catch it though? It’s the SETTING of the goal that’s intoxicating, not the doing of it. That’s why it’s knocked out a morning romp or an evening of candlelight for me – oh my poor partner, if he only knew when he married me that he’d be upstaged by a journal and a pen.

Why do we like to set goals more than achieve them? Because they’re fired up by the heat of our yearnings.

Why do we attend conferences and trainings and retreats only to come home and stay the same just different? Because possibility is a re-chargeable battery pack.

Why do we achieve goals, feel happy and then start all over again? What’s with this empty-full-empty-full cycle we all seem to crave? Because we’re feeding our external story instead of being nourished by our internal one.

I say all of this because today (as in right now) I’m in a retreat for my network marketing business and it’s January. Guess what we’re doing tonight? Yup… setting goals except I don’t call them that anymore, they’re targets instead. They’re focal points. They’re intentions. Why? Because goal fatigue kills business, and rah rah rah-ing some people’s pinnacle achievements creates a divisive culture, fractures teams and sabotages the very essence of what makes a team work: a common drive, togetherness and not individual achievements or goals.

Could I be talking semantics here – sure, but words are insanely important to me and I do my best to choose them wisely. The living story of the word goal these days shows up like a ‘line in the sand’, a ‘set point’, a measurement of ‘accountability’ – think the super popular S.M.A.R.T. goals: Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Everything here is externally motivated. A SMART goal of mine for this blog might be:

It is January 10th 2016 and I am happily celebrating having shared this blog with 100 people.

So let’s say that all of the above happens. I wake up on January 11th, I’ve done my due diligence and I’ve nailed my goal. What happens now? How do I feel now? What is my take away now? What is fueling my next ‘goal’ now?

Well, I’m back at the beginning again aren’t I? I am starting all over. My take away is that I probably feel pretty good about myself for having ‘achieved’ my goal, but now, if I slow down enough to actually feel anything at all, I’m a bit empty, daunted and let down. How come I just achieved that goal and now I’m back at the beginning again? Damn these goals, they’re so elusive. Will I ever get there? So then the fuel for my next goal becomes hope, possibility, and the drive that one day, maybe, just possibly, I will arrive. It will stop because I will reach a celebratory finish line. I will raise my arms in the air, someone will notice this incredible moment other than just me and I’ll be handed a lifetime gold medal of having done ‘my all’ and I never ‘have to’ achieve anything again. I will be done.

As if right? And frankly, how boring and how demeaning to this incredibly complex and beautiful human experience.

Here’s my suggestion. Switch your goals to your yearnings. Focus on the deeper wants, the heart beat that comes without you trying, the dreams that wake you up at night with desire, the fire that never goes out instead. Here’s my example and creation:

Y.E.S. Goal: What is it you YEARN for? Make it your most EXCELLENT of work, and always SITUATE it for SUCCESS (or do-able).

again…

Y.E.S. Goal:

What is it you YEARN for?

Make it your most EXCELLENT of work,

and always SITUATE it for SUCCESS.

Here’s my rewrite: Today I write a passionate and honest blog about goals vs. yearnings and I am personally committed to reaching 100 people by Tuesday January 12th because what I write, I care about, and what I share, I live.

Here’s the original: It is January 10th 2016 and I am happily celebrating having shared this blog with 100 people.

Which one would be worth your heart, effort and energy to achieve? Which one isn’t an achievement at all but rather a compelling decision to live fully?

Here’s to you and all that fires you up.

xxT