When we’re young it’s easier to see our dreams. Our passions float close to the surface.
As you grow up, real life comes into the picture. You have to find a way to make a living — to survive, eat, keep a roof over your head. Growing up may cause you to lose site of your dreams. When you go back to have a look, they may not be the same.
And that’s not a bad thing.
As You Grow and Learn, Things Change
It may be hard to discover that the dreams of your youth are no longer your dreams. Did you imagine that one day you’d be an astronaut, a ballerina, a star wide receiver, a famous actor?
When you look back on what you imagined your life to be like, you may see things radically different than they are now. You may also find that the dreams you once had are no longer your dreams.
Growing and learning are a part of life. Things change, and dreams evolve.
What’s important is to get to the core of your dreams and passions. The visions of your future that you once had can be a clue to where your true passion is.
In “The Highest Goal,” Michael Ray talks about a key moment in all of our lives when we make a discovery about what he calls our Highest Goal:
Researchers tell us that all of us have a defining experience of the highest goal early in our lives, usually around the time of puberty. We each have an experience that we are great, that we have a connection with everything, that we have potential.
…
This experience, if we accept it and remember it, can catapult us beyond the socializations and comparisons that deter us from living the purpose of our lives.
Those moments come from the core of your passion. And though the dream careers and things you want to do may change, the central theme stays the same.
Dreams evolve. They change as we discover more about ourselves and our lives.
Once you discover your core passion — the main theme of your ideal life — the work, goals, and dreams may change.
But that passion will always be there — in one form or another.
I feel like I’m pulling a Dr. Phil, but as I grow older I have become more cognizant of my strengths and weaknesses. As a result, I’m a little less open to people who want me to ‘change’ or ‘improve’… rather, my goals are now to match my strengths with a roadmap that leads to my goals.
Earlier today I read some garbage about Tiger Woods consistently working on his ‘weaknesses’. The fact is, he’s working on fine-tuning his strengths! He’s not giving up on golf, he’s identified where his success is and is simply tweaking to ensure he capitalizes on them.
Get to know your strengths and find how to use them… I believe that’s the key to both success and happiness!
Too true! I met a seventy-year-old man at a speaking gig in California. He was an accountant. He told me that when he was a boy, he used to watch shows on television that featured guys in white hats saving the day from the guys in black hats. He always wanted to be one of the guys in white hats.
“And now he’s an accountant. Talk about a wrong turn,â€
I thought to myself.
As if he knew what I was thinking, the man said, “You
know, I meet a lot of young couples who need help
with their taxes and financial planning. I see myself as
the guy in the white hat, and the IRS as the guys in the
black hats. My job is to help that couple keep as much
of their money as possible. Then they can put it toward
a house, or some other dream.â€
Pretty neat perspective, huh?
Kids are easily influenced by the people around them and people they admire. I think this is where kids got their dreams. As they grow up, they realize that some of their dreams are not achievable probably because they lack certain skills. This will certainly lead to a change in dreams.
I just attended a seminar a few weeks ago called Success Permission Seminar that uses in my opinion EFT to clear ‘blockages’
In a gist of it, it says that a lot of our emotional response is due to what happened to us during our childhood days before the age of 7.
As we experience some feeling when we were younger, we also develop an emotional response to each of the feeling. And for each of the emotional response, we put a meaning to it whether positive or negative.
As we grow older, when we experience a similar emotional response, the meaning will pop up again and may prevent us from doing the right things.
For example if we had some kind of rejection and the meaning put behind it was that ‘I’m not good enough’, the next time we face rejection, the meaning unconsciously surface that sabotages our own success.
So as we grow older, I believe we accumulate a lot of baggages that we then need to clear them if we want to achieve our dreams.
Well, at least, that’s what I understood from the course!
Doug – Good point. Often, our true strengths will point to that underlying theme.
Jason – Great story and perspective! It illustrates this perfectly. Thanks for sharing it.
Pamela – That’s true, but it’s pretty common to recognize the core theme running though all our “dreams” even when we’re young.
Andy – EFT is an interesting tool, and I’ve used it myself with some success.
When we go searching for our lost dreams, they’ve often taken different shapes but they’ve not taken different meanings. You’re right, Tony, that it’s not a bad thing for those dreams to have changed. As Jason tells of the accountant, his white hat isn’t a cowboy hat anymore, but it’s still white.
I agree. There are things we know that are true in ourselves. It may change in the course of our life due to some factors and influences, but I believe that it is our instinct to follow the original theme.