This is an interesting and true story of how fear almost stopped me and my dreams of success. As you read it, think about anything that may be stopping you. Today is the day to, “crush it”!
Motivational Saying that fear can hold you back from doing and achieving things you know you can
When on a path to designing your best life, the desire to create life you can enjoy, as well as leave a great legacy for others, can become very strong. In fact, the desire to achieve can become so strong until you will get hints in the form of dreams as to why its taking so long for you to reach all the dazzling goals that you have set. Dreaming about achieving, lets us know that even when we are asleep our mind is busy working to guide us or to reassure us that the highest and best life is waiting for each of us. Even if we are not sure what we want, our dreams will let us know that there is something wonderful and worth pursuing waiting to be discovered. Of course, most of the time we know what we want but we are fearful about pursuing it. I say take the pressure off and just get started!
I don’t know about you, but I have discovered that there is more pressure involved in not starting something that you really want to achieve. The longer we wait to start achieving, the more anxiety seems to grown. During the economic downturn, my marriage ended and my income went down to almost nothing. I needed and wanted to increase my income again, but I was a little “gun shy” about making a lot of money, again. I was afraid that I would lose it all over again. Imagine that! I was afraid of something that had not yet happened. Fear was controlling every success move I wanted to make. Because I allowed fear to practically dominate my life, I would only work to make enough money to cover some of my bills and necessities. In other words, I was not making enough money and it was solely my responsibility, not the economy. Even though, I desperately wanted to increase my income, I kept sabotaging the growth of my income. I was unaware at the time that I was doing things to prevent myself from achieving my goals and thriving. It was not the economy. It was me! I stayed on the “poor me” journey for a few years. Then, one night, I had a dream about fish and clams:
When I fell asleep, I dreamed I was walking through a fish market with one of my Zumba instructors. All the tables were full of different colored fish, but one of the tables had an unusually large fish, it was humongous! All of a sudden, my Zumba instructor took out a large knife that seem to come from nowhere. She sliced the fish open butterfly style and inside the fish there was an abundance of clams. Now for those of you don’t know, my generation refers to money as “clams”. That’s one of the vernaculars for money. I stood there and exclaimed, “Look at all those clams!” My instructor looked at me and said, “All those clams are there for you. All you have to do is reach out and grab as many as you want and put them in your bag.” I looked at her and said “But they’re all messy.” And she looked back at me and spoke with a disciplined tone, “It doesn’t matter! That’s an excuse, they can be cleaned and turned into something delicious.” Then she said, “So, what are you going to do?” And I just stood there. I did not reach to grab those clams. She looked at me again and said “They are free all you have to do is put forth the effort and grab as many as you can, then another bag and grab more even. Just put forth the effort.” Still, I did nothing.
At that point I woke up, and that still small voice whispered, “The only reason you don’t have everything that you want is because you are holding yourself back. You must put forth the effort. If you put forth the effort, you will have great abundance in all areas of your life.” For the rest of the day I was inspired and I decided to get focused and stay on task until I achieved all of my goals. I imagined myself crushing fear, stuffing it in a box and throwing it in the garbage. I made the decision to bounce back and go for my dream life.
Here is a question for you: Are you preventing yourself from achieving your goals and getting all the good things that you desire in life?
In my next blog, find out more about the meaning of my success dream and what in the world my Zumba instructor had to do with anything. Maybe, you’ll want to start paying more attention to what your dreams are telling you about your success. Till next time….
Get the courage to go for your dreams by listening to Pat Council on Designing Your Life Today.
