I love to potter around the giant car boot sale that is held in my village each Saturday morning. It is a mix of stalls selling fruit and veg and new items plus an eclectic assortment of goods. I find that increasingly many take me down memory lane. This week, it was a collection of sew-on Brownie Guide badges. I can still remember my uniform, full of the badges I’d earned, and how my late Mum would sew them on with pride.
In my Twinkle Album – from the same time as I was a Brownie – it asks: ‘When I grow up I want to be…….’ I had filled in: ‘An actress and a doctor in my spare time’.
At that age, nothing holds us back. Want to be a spaceship captain? An actress and also a doctor? Why not?
Walt Disney looked across orange groves in LA and saw Disneyland in his imagination. Now within Disney there are people with job titles such as ‘Chief Visioneer’. First, you have to vision it then it becomes real. Rather like that lovely Kevin Costner film ‘Field of Dreams’.
When you are a child, before enough people say: “Don’t be silly, you can’t do that…” you had dreams. The big challenge is that after others stop saying “no” or “don’t be silly” to us, we continue the dialogue with ourselves, every single day. We lower our own expectations and dreams. “Who am I to think I can get that job/partner/lifestyle?” we ask ourselves. Then we procrastinate or don’t go for it as our subconscious keeps us ‘safe’ by not risking it.
The Internal Corrections Officer is a real psychological concept. When you are young, your parents, teachers and other adults take on the role of the ‘corrections officer’, telling you what you can and can’t do. When you are older, you internalise this and in the absence of those adults you take on the role yourself. One of my clients refers to this chorus of disapproval inside her head as ‘The Itty Bitty Shitty Committee’. You wouldn’t want to go there to get support, would you?
Ask yourself today: “What would I dare to dream if nothing is in the way?” As you imagine, be careful to make it a ‘How’ free zone. In business and life, you need those who focus on the ‘how’. It’s important but it can also stifle dreams.
I’m a ‘What’ person asking myself: ‘What if we could’? or ‘What would this look like?’ etc.
Clearly you need help and to take action to make your vision into a reality but for now let’s get back to the question. What would you dream? A different job? House? Lifestyle? Body? Relationship?
Take a moment now. Grab a pen and paper or just close your eyes and visualise. What would you dream if everything were available to you and everything were possible?
Then ask yourself: What made me happy at eight years old? What did I want to be when I grow up?
If you are stuck then Google ‘Kids being asked what they want to be when they grow up’. There are lots of charming videos of young dreamers who are not saying no to themselves.
Often what made us happy as children reveals our true self.
Isn’t it time to tap back into that and dream a little?
Get in touch if you would like to talk about this more – https://rosalynpalmer.com/contact/