Make
it happen
by Sandy Kleven,
LCSW
The conversation started out like this. He said, “What is your dream?”
I said, “I don’t know exactly.”
He said, “Do you want to be rich or famous?”
And I said, “I don’t think so.”
“What do you really want?’’ he asked again. “Because
if you don’t know, you aren’t going to get it. Not only that,” he added, “if you can really see it
you are on your way to making it come true.”
I
believe this but I forgot to work on “seeing” my dreams for the future. Are you working on seeing yours?
You can start the same way I did. First, try on some ideas. I thought about
being rich and I thought about being famous. I was trying to imagine myself all decked out, acting uppity, maybe bossing people
around, ducking to avoid all the photographers. No, rich and famous didn’t do a thing for me.
You need to find a dream that lights up your mind when you think about
it; a dream that gets you excited. Then you need to relax into the scenario and experience it in fine detail. As kids, we
had fantasies about grown up things like driving a car, having a job, getting a check. These vision dreams were exciting and
because of that the first time we did these things it was a tremendous pay-off. We thought, ‘I finally did it!’
I have arrived.
When you were a kid you were dreaming
all the time. Kids always talk about their big plans. They sit in class, look out the window and dream.
When we get older, we don’t get into it in the same way. We get practical.
We get busy. We forget to dream.
Bloody Mary, in
South Pacific a musical play from back in the 1950’s, says ‘If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have
a dream come true’’
It’s worth
it to try a new fantasy for your future. Once you can see and feel it, you will start to make it real. It’s part pure
magic as if the thoughts themselves start to change from mist to something solid but the other part is logical, once you know
what you want and get excited about it, then you can go after it and do the things you need to do to make it happen.
I want to be a poet, writer and filmmaker. I want plush overstuffed chairs
in front of a fireplace where I can sit with my production team planning scenes and checking our latest work as it’s
projected on the wall. I want to work with a cameraman named Jack so I can say, ‘Hey, Jack, great shot.’ I want
to say ‘Nice work, everybody. It’s a wrap.’ I want to get a phone call that says, ‘This is Sun Dance.
We are interested in your film.’
Stay tuned.
Maybe it will happen. What about your dream?
