A Scottish adventure, a dream fulfilled. Do you dream?
Glengorm Castle
I write from Lochgilphead, then I’m off to Oban, after that Tobermory on the Isle of Mull which becomes the new home of found us. You may have already seen island photos populating this website.
My wife is Scottish and we are outdoor types, always have been, and we’ve loved the wilds of the Highlands and Islands. Claire landing a teaching role at Tobermory High School became the catalyst for the move, the sale of the house near Saddleworth, and the physical and mental de-cluttering of our lives.
Dreams, Goals, Plans
I want to write about dreams we had and have, and of how in business speak we take the fookin’ fun out of dreams by calling and turning them into goals. In fact we cause internal conflict which leads to stasis or “ground hog day” with plans to follow that we never execute. For me the terms “goals” and “plans” are mere business speak. Business jargon that eviserates the essence of a dream we had or long for.
I’ve always had a love of books, and in this blog post I can only but recall Orwell’s Doublethink from 1984. This is where the individual is sold two conflicting ideas as reality. In the case of 1984 the indoctrination occurs via “Big Brother” within the dystopian society that our protagonist Winston finds himself in.
People dream; we still have that child within us. And dreams are important. Yet when we get a job, a career, we change.
We focus on business goals.
We forget self and life outside of employment, career, life.
We use the word “goals”, letting go of dreams.
This business term “goal” sanitises the dreamers, and all of us dream.
What is a dream?
It is a want, a desire. A wish driven by emotion and our very self. It is an achievement of ours and not another.
And this is a crucial distinction. We have become vehicles fulfilling other’s dreams via the language of goals. This post is about our own personal dreams; of how to recognise, reach them.
This is the conflict, the Doublethinking Orwell warns us of.
We feel we need to create goals and plans but do not realise these are subject to or driven by others goals and plans. So we believe in our goals, but also in achieving the other’s goals seeing them as part of our goals and planning. This is the contradictory position I realised we can find ourselves in. This is society. Believing we can achieve our goals and another’s, when both are mutually exclusive. In real terms this is dressed up as job, career, success, achievement. But we are failing to fulfil our dreams.
Have you ever had a flashback to those childhood days of dreaming?
Dreams and Goals
I prefer to talk about Dreams and Action versus Goals and Plans.
Here’s why.
Dreams are unique and centred in the very soul of the person.
Action is a doing word and avoids our being bogged down in pure plans. Many people plan but can fail to act or are distracted.
I discovered plans are irrelevant because when a dream, it is always with us and we will act on the spot to fulfil a dream and not be limited to plans that may take the very life out of intuition and risk taking.
This aligns with the concept of living in the moment, acting in each moment to create tomorrow’s moment, yet to arrive.
If you must talk Goals
There is a huge wealth of material on goal setting and creating plans to match and meet these goals.
I myself would first recommend reading a famous book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People written original by Stephen Covey. Have a look at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People
Whilst written a while ago and updated, the book is a valuable insight into how you work as a person, and of how not to work, and of goals and planning in a traditional and business sense.
But we can reduce traditional goal setting (in a business or career context) to the following.
Set a goal. You can use the SMART acronym to do so.
I suggest you also look at a SWOT analysis of self.
Then you create the plan(s) to do materialise goal. I personally prefer looking at Q1-4, and H1/2. You can then break a quarter or half year into individual months, then weeks.
Look at year 1. Then 2-3 years and what you wish to achieve, then 5+ years.
What I am trying to distinguish is my preferring to dream as against thinking of goals. It may seem like semantics, but I use the term dream since this takes me out of work, career, other people, and taps into what is important for me. What in fact “floats my boat.”
We commonly lose our dreams to the job or career or way of life we think we should embrace.
Here’s a good example.
Claire, my wife, and I are outdoor types being fell runners, cyclists, and swimmers. Claire is Scottish and through her we have had many adventures in the Highlands and Islands of her native country. And we were married in Kingussie. We had a dream to move Scotland.
We discussed the dream together.
We made drawings of the house we’d like to live in.
We looked at timelines.
Claire took action by registering with the relevant teaching organisation and getting a new Scottish DBS.
I looked to run found us from Scotland.
The action Claire took was to look for teaching jobs. Hard to come by in the Highlands and Islands.
With it being dream, we were driven, faith and hope created.
Claire eventually spotted a biology teacher role at Tobermory High School which she went for as her dream and won it.
This became the catalyst for us both to take the leap of faith by selling the house and moving to Tobermory.
The dream drove the action.
We did not really lay plans down. We just acted.
You’ll note I use action and not the word plan.
Action delivers and plans do not. If you have a dream and no plans you are likely to act each and every moment you live in.
And this is what I prefer to do now. And it works.
Trust That Good Will Come
It was a slow, boring January day at the Blue Sky Lodge. We had just moved in. The house was a mess. Construction hadn’t begun yet. All we had was a plan, and a dream. It was too cold and rainy to skydive or even be outdoors. There wasn’t any furniture yet. We were lying around on the floor.
I don’t know who got the idea first, him or me. But we both picked up Magic Markers about the same time. Then we started drawing on the wall.
“What do you want to happen in your life?” I asked. He drew pictures of seaplanes, and mountains, and boats leaving the shore. One picture was a video-camera man, jumping out of a plane. “I want adventure,” he said.
I drew pictures of a woman tromping around the world. She went to war-torn countries, then sat on a fence and watched. She visited the mountains and the oceans and many exciting places. Then I drew a heart around the entire picture, and she sat there in the middle of all the experiences on a big stack of books.
“I want stories,” I said, “ones with a lot of heart.”
Across the entire picture, in big letters, he wrote the word “Woohoo.”
As an afterthought, I drew a woman skydiver who had just jumped out of the plane. She was frightened and grimacing. Next to her I wrote the words “Just relax.”
On the bottom of the wall I wrote, “The future is only limited by what we can see now.” He grabbed a marker, crossed out “only,” and changed it to “never.”
“There,” he said, “it’s done.”
Eventually, the house got cleaned up and the construction finished. Furniture arrived. And yellow paint covered the pictures on the wall. We didn’t think much about that wall until months later. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, and sometimes in ways we’d least expect, each of the pictures we’d drawn on that wall began to materialize and manifest.
“It’s a magic wall,” I said.
Even if you can’t imagine what’s coming next, relax. The good pictures are still there. The wall will soon become covered with the story of your life. Thank God, the future is never limited by what we can see right now.
The wall isn’t magic.
The magic is in us and what we believe.
Before we start speaking the language of letting go, we need to understand what a powerful behavior letting go and letting God really is.
God, help me do my part. Then help me let go, and let you do yours.
Activity
Meditate for a moment on the year ahead. Make a list of things you’d like to see happen, attributes you’d like to gain, things you’d like to get and do, changes you’d like to occur. You don’t have to limit the list to this year. What do you want to happen in your life? Make a list of places you’d like to visit and things you’d like to see. Leave room for the unexpected, the unintended. But make room for the possibility of what you’d like too—your intentions, wishes, dreams, hopes, and goals. Also, list what you’re ready to let go of too—things, people, attitudes, and behaviors you’d like to release. If anything were possible, anything at all, what are the possibilities you’d like to experience and see?
More Language of Letting Go: 366 New Daily Meditations