3 Reasons That We Build Our Dream Out
Dreams require fullness and completeness to them. We will need this to maintain our commitment in our journey to achieve them. There will be plenty of bad days and hard days along the way simply because this is life. It was never meant to be easy to achieve our dreams. But in a way, that is what makes dreams so worthwhile. So what do I mean by a fullness to our dreams? Our dreams must be built out in our minds. They need to be able to stand on their own on all fronts. We do this for three reasons:
1. Our dreams must be able to bear the storm
Chasing our dreams will be a battle. We will have to reckon with ourselves, our values and our lives as we go on this journey. And because of that, our dream needs to be able to stand on its own if a piece falls off.
I grew up in a beach town and most of the oceanfront houses were built on stilts. They did this so that if the beach flooded during a hurricane or big storm, these houses wouldn't get damaged as severely. Our dreams need to be built up in the same way. If a hurricane comes our way, then our dream can withstand the storm. Maybe one of the stilts will fall, but the dream can remain steady. And even if the floodwaters rise over the stilts, the damage is mitigated compared to what it would have been had we not prepared.
So let's stop using the beach house in a hurricane analogy and talk about what this actually looks like. With my writing dream, this means building out my purpose and passion. I have clarified my vision with this to know that I want to help military spouses achieve their dreams, whatever they may be, within the constraints that military life puts upon us. I have also clarified that this is for me; if the only person whose dream I make come true is myself, then all this writing and work is worth it. If the floods come with negative comments, I can withstand the storm. If the rains fall with canceled plans due to last-minute military callings, my dream still stands.
Our dreams start out bigger than us. They require us to grow to reach them. But if we never build out our dreams, it's easy to let our dreams wash away when the bad days come.
2. We need our dreams to feel real
We have to be able to visualize our dream so clearly that we can walk within it. If our dream is a house, then we need to be able to walk from room to room in our minds. We need to know the big picture details like bedrooms, bathrooms and where the kitchen is at. But we also need to see the little details like the paint color, where we hang the family portraits and what style plates are in the cabinets.
This is a defense mechanism for us. We have to protect our dream because it is fragile. The most cherished things usually are. When we encounter challenges, we can retreat within our dream to remember its beauty and value. This reminds us of what we are fighting for. The clarity helps us make the challenges we encounter manageable and minimize the struggles we come up against because nothing seems that bad compared to the grandness of our dreams.
On the days when I don't know what to write, I can visualize holding my book. I can imagine flipping through the pages and making highlight marks on things that I needed to hear from myself. I can see the bigger vision of holding a whole book, which makes the problem of not knowing what Friday's post will be so much smaller. I can reignite my passion to remember why I started this journey in the first place. I can remind myself that you and I are so important, which is why I have to push through writer's block. Only when we know the reality of our dreams can we gain the strength we need to pursue them because even on the good days, we can sometimes forget why we got into this fight to begin with.
3. We have to know what to throw out when the time comes
I have a perfect vision for my writing dreams. I know the publishing house. I know my agent. I know what my royalty check says. But I also know that everything won't be perfect when this dream comes true. Not everything will match up in the exact way I imagined it. I have to be prepared to sacrifice something in my perfect vision.
But we risk sacrificing the wrong thing if we do not have the perfect vision. Maybe I won't get picked up by my dream publishing house, but if I don't know what that is, then I may end up going with a publisher who doesn't match my values. If I don't know who the perfect agent is, then I may say yes to the first one who says yes to me. If I don't know my royalty check goal, then I may not advocate for what I am worth when the time comes.
I have built out my dream so much that I know the details. And because I know the details, I can actually identify what matters to me. Maybe some things will be better when they come true, and maybe some things will be worse, but if we don't know exactly what we're looking for, then we won't know when to stop. If the only thing I knew about my dream was that I wanted to publish my book, I could finish it in the next month. The option always exists to self-publish and simply post what I have written so far as an Amazon ebook that I could probably convince my friends and family to buy. That's not my dream, though. I want my book in a physical form. I want it on bookshelves when I walk into a store. I want it to help military spouses, which means I need a community of military spouses who want to read it. I want my book to make a difference, and while I am proud of what I have written so far, my manuscript is so many steps away from being ready to print.
We are all keenly aware that chasing our dreams demands sacrifices. Our service members have made that abundantly clear. We have to know which hill to die on. We have to know when to stand our ground on something and when to walk away because it wasn't the essential ingredient to begin with. We have to make sure that we only sacrifice the things that we want to. I do want to clarify that a sacrifice does mean we didn't want to give it up in the first place, but there are varying levels of that. When we make a sacrifice, we want to make sure that it points us in the direction of the fullest life we want to live rather than sacrificing for the sake of doing something.
Growing up, one of my biggest dreams was to be married. Throughout middle school, high school and college, I built my perfect husband box. It was everything I thought my husband would be and, frankly, everything I thought he should be. That box could never bear the weight of a real relationship, though. It required perfection, and I was never going to find that. And honestly, I could not be in a relationship with perfection, even if I did find it. When I met my husband, he took the box and shattered it. Not in a way that I abandoned everything I believed in and wanted for my life. But in a way where the only pieces that were left of the box were the ones that really mattered. And from there, we could build a new box together of what our life would look like.
We build out our dreams to perfection. It is our strategy to keep the dream alive until we get to the point where we can hold it in our hands. Our dreams will not be perfect when we achieve them. They won't solve every problem in our lives. I know they will be perfect for us, even if perfect doesn't look like we once thought it did. I believe in soulmates, and my husband is mine. I sustained the dream while I waited for him to come into my life, and when the time came, I let go of the pieces that didn't matter as much (even if I didn't know which ones they were before I met him).
Take the time to find this level of clarity with your dreams so that you can hold them in your hands or walk through them. We don't necessarily need to know which aspects won't exist when the time comes. We just need something to hold on to in the meantime so that we can stay in the game long enough to see what our dream truly looks like when it comes to fruition.