How to Tell if your Big Dreams are Blocking Your Success

I'm a huge fan of swinging for the fences on our big dreams. 

One of the questions I ask my clients right at the get-go is about what their big vision looks like. 

Even if they struggle to describe it, I can immediately see what we're working with and where there mindset is.

One of the primary problems, though, with hanging out with big dreamers is that sometimes those big dreams can get in the way of progress of said dreamer if the energy isn't being properly managed.

Sometimes those big dreams can straight up sabotage us in our tracks. 

Because when you really boil it on down, the only reason we want what we want is to feel happy. 

And when we have decided to hang our happiness on an external condition, this can become our undoing. 

Thich Nhat Hahn wrote, "Say you have a notion of happiness, an idea about what will make you happy...Your idea tells you what conditions you need in order to be happy. You've entertained this idea for 10 or 20 years, and now you realize that your idea of happiness is making you suffer. 

This one made me sit straight up in my plane seat. 

How many of us spend years and years in pursuit of something we've wanted so desperately only to realize that when it arrives it's become actually the greatest source of our suffering.

Can you think of a time when this happened for you? 

Let's peel back the layers for a hot second to make sure we're really getting what we're talking about here:

We want what we want because we believe it will make us happy...until the pursuit of it and the process to get there practically flatlines us. 

Our goals are worth nothing if the thought of them and the waking up and recommitting to them each morning doesn't bring us joy.

I want to invite you to do a little deep dive scan with your big vision, firsthand.

Grab your journal and get to work by answering the following questions:

1. What big dream makes your heart do split leaps? (I'm talking Bring It On! style excitement)

2. How do you feel when you think about the dirty details to get there? Notice what's happening in your physical body and make note of it. (i.e. Do you feel exhilarated or exhausted? There's a difference and that difference matters).

3. Bring your attention now to why you want this goal and check-in on your internal joy meter. Does the dreaming experience make you feel as joyful as you imagine the physical manifestation will? (spoiler alert: If you're really going there, it should).

Let me give you a quick example: 

One of our big goals is to expand our home. We want to add more bedrooms for family and friends to come and stay when they are visiting.

We want to share in the magic of this place we get to call home with others and in its current state, we have to set up tents outside or turn our living room in to a slumber party. (For real...it's a converted waterfront summer cottage that is now year-round magic and our beloved home). 

When I think about expanding our home (aka creating my Joanna Gaines-style kitchen #hearteyes and giving our girl her dream pink castle bunkbed with a slide), it makes me giddy with excitement.

I feel the feelings of what it's going to be like to touch the counter tops and put things away in the cabinets and walk in the new front door and tuck our girl in at night (slide and all). 

I think about having our beloved people come stay for the weekend and how much fun we will have together with late night chats and campfires. 

And instead of triggering me because it's not here yet, it makes me feel thrilled about enjoying it when it is.

This has taken LOADS of practice, but what I've learned is that the classic line from The Secret, "What we think about, we bring about" is the God's honest truth. 

And here's a little extra credit for you...

Being grateful for what you have...aka our backyard campouts, living room slumber parties and dishwasher-less kitchen...is the secret sauce. 

I love our home. I love my life. I love what we've got going here so much...and the idea of expanding it feels incredible even though it's not here yet. 

You've gotta love what you've got enough to welcome in what's next, {{firstname}}.

Is this ringing some bells for you?

Want to super-charge your goals?

Start feeling happy right where you are. 

Start appreciating what your former self worked so hard to bring to life. 

Watch what happens next.