Remember when you used to dream about your bright future? I know it sounds like a corny question, but hear me out. Children are dreamers at heart. They dream of playing professional sports, they dream of flying to space, they dream of singing, and they dream of whatever comes to mind at the moment.
There’s so much we can learn from kids.They don’t think about obstacles or “reality.” They dream. That’s what they do.
Children’s dreams haven’t been crushed by society. Kids haven’t been discouraged by people so disappointed with their own lives that they bring down everyone else trying to do more.
Once I asked my daughter — 4 years old at the time– what she wanted to be when she grew up. “A butterfly,” she said. I could have said “On no honey, that’s not possible.” Instead, I said that’s fantastic!
Children are born with some type of idea or clue about what they love to do. I have a feeling that children know what they were created to do, but as we get older we get distracted and disconnected from that awareness.
Pablo Picasso said something similar,
“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. ”
As adults, we have to re-connect with that part of us, but it requires dreaming like children again. At some point in-between high school and a mortgage we stop dreaming.
But the day we stop dreaming is the day we stop fully living.
So how do you start dreaming again? There are several things we can do to get new ideas or our start dreaming again.
- Visit new places
- Spend time at a museum
- Learn something new or something you’ve always been curious about
- Start painting, photography, or something artistic
- Create something
- Start journaling
- Go on a mountain hike
- Start a business like the wine company started by a friend of mine.
The point is to try something new, take risks, and change our daily routines. Trust yourself. Try something you’ve had on your mind for a while, but never attempted. Don’t worry about what others think. And it doesn’t matter if you’re good at it.
Start dreaming again.