I want to celebrate the many dreams that have become woven into my daily life. Not the kind of dreams that come at night (although those are great too!) but the ones that I hold in my heart: I want meaningful work. I want to have fun when I perform on my trumpet. I want an awesome, sexy lover. You know, the important things. I want to live somewhere that feels good to my soul. I want to be safe. I want wellness.
In the past, I identified as a “dreamer.” I always had tons of great ideas, but didn’t really know how to make things happen! So after many years of extensive research and experimentation, and gradual real-life success, I have come up with a dream manifestation formula that I’d like to share with you:
DO SHIT!
That’s it! That’s the formula. (Sorry, Grandma.)
Start taking action. If your dream is going to become a reality, then it has to enter this reality. Take even two minutes to visualize the best you can: When your dream is taking place, what sorts of things are happening? How do you feel? What are you wearing? How are you expressing? What actions are you taking? What does your day look like in this dream reality? (If you cannot visualize and must go off of your intellectual knowledge, then do that.)
In a dream of physical wellness, for example, you may see yourself caring for your body. You notice that, in the morning, you eat a healthy meal (or perhaps drink a smoothie full of greens). You see yourself vibrant and active, going on a walk with a friend (who also cares about their health, you’re supporting one another’s goals), doing an evening workout, taking time to stretch and relax.
Notice the real-life actions that are present in this dream world:
- Making healthy meals
- Connecting with health-minded community
- Walking and spending quality time with those people
- Having an evening workout
- Stretching
- Relaxing
To help yourself anchor these things in the time and space of this reality, try giving them a space to go. Ex: Tuesday at 2pm, 30 mins – I’m going to check out www.meetup.com and look for social gatherings that are health oriented so I can start building community. I like to imagine this space like a bowl to catch your dream in, carved out of space and time.
After researching, remember to refer back to the dream manifestation formula: Do shit! Schedule yourself to attend that meet-up you found, go buy the ingredients for that awesome recipe and pick a day you’re going to make it, call your friend who works out a lot to ask them for tea. Endless research or preparation can be a cop-out. Keep moving forward. If you feel anxious, remind yourself that it’s going to be awesome to be on the other side… with your dream world happening in real life!
Important note: Start where you’re at! If you don’t have community, build community. No more, “I can’t because I don’t already…” You can create! Embrace that the best changes will be the new ones. You can celebrate those spaces as areas of potential, room to grow.
It’s good to remember that everyone comes from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, has unique personality traits, life experiences, and gifts. Everyone’s journey will look different and that’s okay – let’s keep helping one another along the way.
Keep taking actions, even tiny actions. Everything will add up, your life is made of tiny moments. Your daily habits may shift to reflect new intentions and goals, bigger actions may start to take place, like moving to a town that is healthier for your emotional body. Don’t discount the tiny actions that happened first, sometimes it takes those little changes to loosen up and make the big life shifts.
No matter what, keep going. If things don’t work out, learn from those things and you’re still winning. I hope we can all have the opportunity to make our dreams into a reality! What a wonderful world it will be.
Dream Manifestation Tool Kit: Four Handy Tools to Help Dreamers Live Into Their Best Selves
- Do Shit. Take actions, even small actions. Schedule something you can do today. Live your dream now! If you feel any timidness or a block in the process, see if you can move past it by focusing on the exciting end results: “I’m going to feel so great all day after I go running this morning. Running always energizes me.”
- Time & Space. Give your dream actions a time and space (ex: Thursday, 2pm). While our world of imagination and dreaming may be limitless and free of any constraints of time, this world and reality typically has an experience of time and space. By giving your dreams this space-time “container” to land in, it can help invite them to make that jump from dreamland into reality.
- Celebrate Mistakes. Give yourself permission to grow and try new things. If you’re really stepping-up into new territory and making positive changes, you may find yourself doing things you’ve never done before. Celebrate this as a sign of expansion. If you make mistakes – as we often do, especially as a beginner – seize the opportunity to grow! Give yourself lots of appreciation and consider learning new things to be a benefit of traversing that unknown territory.
- Self-Nurturing. If you fall-short on goals or feel like you’re not doing a “good enough” job, remember to be gentle with yourself. Practice being self-nurturing. The whole point is to grow and blossom in positive ways, so being kind and supportive to yourself makes sense! Be on your own team and cheer yourself on. Celebrate successes, even small ones, and forgive yourself as you grow in new and exciting ways.
Kiah Abendroth is an interfaith minister and co-author of Scanning For Signal, a book of introspective writings and prose that explore the feelings and emotions most relevant, and often most troublesome, to an awakening generation of young people and millennials alike.
