Follow Your Dreams

Follow Your Dreams

20 Ways to Change Your Story

9. Follow Your Dreams

Nope. Not those dreams. Not the “I want to be a rock star” or “I want to be a millionaire” kind of dreams. Not the goal oriented dreams of your waking hours.

Don’t get me wrong. Those waking-life, aspirational dreams are fabulous. By all means, go for them. It’s just that I don’t really have to tell you that, do I? Everyone pretty much knows that following those dreams will be life and story changing.

No. The dreams I’m talking about here are your nighttime dreams, the ones you have while sleeping.

Now, don’t tell me you don’t dream, because you do. EVERYONE dreams, several times in the course of the night. When you reach REM sleep, you dream. If you think you aren’t dreaming, it’s is just that you aren’t remembering your night dreams upon awakening, and that’s a different issue. (For help with that, download my Ten Tips for Improving Dream Recall.)

Once you get into the habit of remembering your dreams

FOLLOW THEM!

bee-44520_960_720Dreams can be messages from your Higher Self. They can be adventures in other dimensions, including past, future and parallel lives. They can be healing journeys. They can be expeditions into your potential future. They can be challenging. They can be enlightening. They can be fun.

And they can be story changing!

Pay attention to your dreams and honor them with action. Think that sounds wacky?

  • Albert Einstein credited his eventual formulation of the Theory of Relativity to a preoccupation with a dream he had as an adolescent in which he was sledding through a field of stars.
  • Elias Howe dreamed of cannibals who jabbed at him with spears that had holes in the tips. He awoke with a big “Aha!” that if he moved the eye to the tip of the needle, he could resolve the struggle he was having getting his sewing machine invention to work.
  • Harriet Tubman claimed that dreams helped her to find the right pathways to lead slaves to freedom in the Underground Railroad.
  • A dream inspired Mahatma Gandhi with the idea to use work strikes as a non-violent means of protest in India’s struggle for independence.
  • The melody for The Beatles’ song, Yesterday, came to Paul McCartney in a dream. The tune was so clear and familiar that he was sure he must have heard it somewhere. It took weeks of playing it for friends, all of whom said they’d never heard it, to convince him that he must have composed it in his sleep. Unfortunately, the lyrics were more of a challenge. Those timeless three syllables of “Yes-ter-day” started out as “Scram-bled-Eggs” before the lyrics eventually evolved into the classic song we know and love.

The point is, don’t dismiss your night dreams as nonsense. They contain extremely valuable information and experience. If you pay attention to your dreams and act on the messages you receive from them, you may find that they help you to:

  • find solutions to problems
  • sort through your emotions
  • strengthen your intuition
  • enhance your creativity
  • develop self-awareness
  • heal physically and emotionally
  • connect to your Higher Self
  • dream your way forward into a bigger, better story

So, follow your dreams! They won’t lead you astray.

~~~~~

This is the 10th post in a 21-post series sparked by Chapter 9 of Fallen, The Adventures of a Deep Water Leaf, in which Lizard suggests that Alora change her story.

#20WaysIn20Days, #ChangeYourStory, #Fallen

Make Picture Stories

Make Picture Stories

20 Ways to Change Your Story

7. Make Picture Stories

A picture, it’s said, is worth a thousand words, so you can imagine the immense story power a picture holds.

Why do you think Vision Boards have become so popular?

Images capture our emotions and imagination in ways that mere words cannot. Even with the most skillful writing, a story captures our imagination most powerfully when the words cause our minds to make mental images.

road-trip-1044982_1920Anyone at all familiar with the Law of Attraction is probably familiar with the idea of Vision Boards or Dream Books. You decide you want a new car, for instance, so you find pictures of the exact car you want – make, model, color, every detail – and you glue them down in a journal or on a piece of poster board. Maybe you even cut out a picture of your own smiling face and place it behind the steering wheel. You might add a picture of the open road unfolding before you and your brand new shiny car.

This is great. And it works. Especially if you take time every day to look at your Picture Story, to dream your way into it, and to imagine yourself living it and feeling the joy of it.

What can be even more powerful is to let your heart and soul do the dreaming for you.

This is the Visioning® method I learned in my Creative Journal Expressive Arts (CJEA) training with Lucia Capacchione. Her trademarked ten-step Visioning® process is a profoundly life-changing (and story changing!) practice. You can read more about this method in her book, Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams.

Instead of deciding in your head what you want, get quiet and invite your heart and soul to speak to you through images. Pose a specific question, if you like, such as, “what is my perfect work?” or “who is my soul mate?” or “where is my perfect home and what does it look like?” Or, you can be a bit more general and begin with a broader focus phrase like, “the year ahead” or “my soul-centered life”.

Now give yourself 20 minutes or so to browse through magazines, not looking for any specific images, simply allowing images to show up and grab you. Which images speak to you? Cut those out. You don’t need to understand what they mean. Glue them down. Spend some time with them and listen to what they have to say. Listen to their stories for they will soon become your stories.

It may happen quickly or it may take some time. It will require action on your part in addition to dreaming.

I just realized an amazing story manifestation in my own life today.

paintingFBOnce upon a time, many years ago, I painted this picture as a gift for my husband. I gave it to him – for a birthday or anniversary – and I told him, “I’d like to live here with you someday.”

The painting was not based on any “real” place that I had seen. It came out of my heart’s imagination.

That painting has stood on the mantle of my fireplace for the past 30 years. I see it every day, without really “seeing” it anymore as it has become such an ever-present thread in the fabric of my life and surroundings. An ingrained, subconscious part of my reality.

Recently, we decided to buy a piece of land on which to build our retirement home, the home in which we intend to spend the rest of our lives. We looked at a lot of properties. A LOT. The moment I walked onto the land we eventually purchased, I was drawn to the beautiful pine that stood, alone, in the center of a cleared area. I stood under the tree and heard the wind sigh through her and I experienced an instantaneous and heart-centered feeling of homecoming.

DSC_0350_Crop_Adjust-SmallerAs I sit on that property today, admiring the view, a powerful flash of deja vu reminds me of the painting I created so many years ago.

It occurs to me that the dream of my heart has become real. That picture I painted, of no “real” place, bears a striking resemblance to the view I’m now enjoying as we plan together, my husband and I, just where our new house will sit.

More than 30 years ago, my heart showed me its dream, and through a long and winding road, it has led me to it.

I still want to live here with my love. And someday has become today. I can just picture it.

 

~~~~~

This is the 8th post in a 21-post series sparked by Chapter 9 of Fallen, The Adventures of a Deep Water Leaf, in which Lizard suggests that Alora change her story.

#20WaysIn20Days, #ChangeYourStory, #Fallen