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June 14, 2019

Believing Is Seeing

We’re all taught to believe what we see. If we can see it, it’s real. If we can’t, it’s not. It plays into our left brained, logical based society. If it can’t be explained then it doesn’t exist or isn’t real.

I used to think I was crazy for the way I lived. I focused on where I was going, what I wanted, how I was going to get there, I saw it play out, finish lines, jobs – I didn’t know what I was naturally doing back then, but I was fuelling the future, fuelling the dreams.

The more I shared my dreams and hopes with people the more I was left feeling unheard, unseen and in doubt of myself. They planted seeds of negativity, poked holes in my dreams, told me why it wasn’t possible.

And I began to fuel those doubts. I thought about what they said, not with discernment but with fear. Their fear became my fear. Their doubt became my doubt. And I operated from that place. I stopped seeing what could go right and started seeing what could go wrong.

And while healthy discernment is good, awfulizing is not.

And I was awfulizing. But we do that, don’t we? We focus on the fear, on the negative, on the problems that could arise. We replay conversations over and over in our mind, berating ourselves, feeling shame rise inside of us with our perception of what others thought of us.

The world tells us to be anything we want when we’re young. We’re entertained into play time “what do you want to be when you grow up?” And they let you riddle off your ideas and dreams and hopes. Until a certain age, when it’s no longer acceptable to dream wild dreams.

This is now a time to get serious. College applications. University courses. Life decisions. Big money. Big dreams. Big decisions. Writing won’t pay the bills. Artist isn’t a career choice. Think pension instead of passion.

And the dreams inside begin to shrivel as we take the path of least resistance, for a time. It seems easier in the beginning to conform, to make those logic based decisions about what will pay the bills and what will allow you to get a comfortable home in a comfortable neighbourhood and take a comfortable vacation and have a comfortable retirement.

Isn’t it odd that we are thinking of our retirement when we’re 18 by the career choices we’re making? Yes, it’s important to look to the future but are we living now or are we planning to die? Are we living together or dying together?

When I left my full time position in an Oil & Gas company there was mixed reviews – most people couldn’t believe I was being crazy. How can you give up this? Pension, dental, health benefits? But what they couldn’t see was the tears streaming down my face everyday, the hating the drive to and from work, the feeling of containment at my desk. It wasn’t a bad workplace. It wasn’t the right place for me.

Some people told me why they were jealous and admired me – they had 3 vehicles, a cottage with a bigger mortgage than their house, 3. 5 kids, a dog and a wife at home to take care of. They hated their jobs but they were too bogged down in stuff to do something different.

So they got by, they coped, they showed up and went through the motions of a comfortable existence that gave them a comfortable life.

But what happens when we get comfortable? Comfort is where dreams die, where passion dies, where amazing relationships and hot sex dies, where our life force and hope dies. Comfort is not a place where anything grows.

And we are meant to grow. We are meant to grow and up-level and life, not merely exist through it.

We are taught to settle, to put with, to do just what’s necessary. For what? To cope, to have a decent pension in 40 years, you hope. To be comfortable. But how can you be comfortable when you’re miserable.

What I’ve learned is that some people have a dream in their soul, a fire in their belly and conformity can only silence it for so long, until one day those of us with that fire inside of us, wakes up to realize we want more.

And more isn’t the typical more we’re showed in society. It’s not bigger cars, bigger houses, more vacations, it’s not more stuff. It’s more fulfillment. It’s more awareness, more growth, more living in a life that’s full of unfulfilled and unhappy people going through the motions.

To find meaning, to be woke in a world that’s become robotic is a true act of defiance. We are conditioned into unconsciousness. We are conditioned into doing what the external world has told us to do. We are conditioned with fear of what could go wrong, why it won’t work and we’re growing gardens of doubt instead of gardens of dreams.

If we can’t see it, we fear it’s not real. It takes faith, deep faith, deep believing, deep knowing inside of you to hold onto a dream when no one else sees it, when the world tells you it’s not possible.

And we’re not being taught to do this.

Until we wake up wanting more and we can’t contain inside of ourselves any longer the desire to live, to throw off the shackles and chains in which we’ve been living, to retil the soil of our thoughts and replant belief, faith, love, connection and following your gut and your dreams.

It’s possible to plant new gardens in your mind. We reap what we sow and what we have in our external life is a direct result of the thoughts, the feelings, the beliefs that we’ve been harbouring and experiencing.

What we fuel grows and many of us have only learned to fuel the fear. But what if we spent more time fuelling he dream, spending time with people who dream bigger than you, who ask you to dream more, who ask you to step into your highest potential and purpose?

What would be possible, for you, for me, for all of us if we learned to dream our world into being?

I can tell you that my path of entrepreneurship wasn’t easy. I didn’t have all the answers but what I did have was a dream, knowing in my soul that I wasn’t meant to sit at a desk all day tapping numbers into a database while I was shoving all the greatness and potential down inside of me.

In order to conform we have to disconnect from our truth.

It became more painful to be disconnected than it did it to be uncertainly living my dream and figuring it out as I went.

I dreamed my world into being by taking aligned action into where I wanted to go. I fuelled the dream instead of the nightmare of doubt. And you can do the same. It’s not being ungrateful to want more fulfillment in your life, to listen to the call of your soul, to listen to your deepest guidance that you were made for more.

It’s ok to admit that we want something more, to admit that we have a longing in our souls for more and it’s ok to keep those cards close to your chest, it’s ok to find groups and networks who do believe in your dreams.

It’s not only ok to believe in what no one else can see except you, it’s critical if you’re going to live your purpose. Because if you have a song in your soul, something calling to you it, it’s yours and yours alone. No one else can see it, they may never be able to validate or give you approval to go after your dreams.

And it’s not their place to do it.

It’s yours. It’s your place to see yourself in your highest potential, to feel that light in your soul and to believe in yourself.

It’s ok to follow a dream that no one else can see. And it’s ok to believe in what you can’t yet see, what’s not tangible. Because all the greatest things we have in the world started as an idea in someone’s mind, it worked its way into their soul where it became a calling they couldn’t deny and then it became reality.

Seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing. And when you believe it, see in your mind and heart first, then you can create it.

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