In his book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, A Toltec Wisdom Book, Don Miguel Ruiz wrote:
“Humans are dreaming all the time. Before we were born the humans before us created a big outside dream that we will call society’s dream or the dream of the planet. The dream of the planet is the collective dream of billions of smaller, personal dreams, which together create a dream of a family, a dream of a community, a dream of a city, a dream of a country and finally a dream of the whole humanity. The dream of the planet includes all of society’s rules, its beliefs, its laws, its religions, its different cultures and ways to be, its governments, schools, social events and holidays.
“We were born with the capacity to learn how to dream and the humans who live before us teach how to dream the way society dreams. The outside dream has so many rules that when a new human is born, we hook the child’s attention and introduce those rules into his or here mind. The outside dream uses Mom and Dad, the schools and religion to teach us how to dream.”
Take a moment to reflect on that.
Have you ever thought about the idea that the dream you think is the dream may not actually be your dream?
The vast majority of people are brain-washed into thinking that the dream is to have more and more – more money, more things, more of just about everything. The trouble is that when we believe that more is better and equate it with being more, we equate people with less resource as being less – less smart, less able, less valuable. We discount them. We even do this to ourselves and we miss the many inner gifts that we all bring to life.
And when we believe that’s just the way things are, we don’t question. We assume limitation and we give up our resourcefulness and creativity to find new and different solutions and ideas.
Have you ever stopped to think about your own definition of success?
In fact, why is success considered to be important in the first place? After all, if you think about it, life is all about the experience – whatever that experience may be, it just is – whether this relates to your personal life or your business. But in our culture, the primary, if not the only, measure of success is financial and little attention is paid to other definitions of success.
We’ve all bought into the bigger is better, and more is better. That isn’t necessarily so. For example, in business, the usual mantra is growth, growth and more growth. And yet, this may not be sustainable, as Yves Chouinard, the Founder of Patagonia pointed out, when he said that constant growth is not sustainable but this fact is disguised by many companies when they lay off employees and contract, because they transfer that to an “extraordinary item” for accounting purposes.
Don’t keep buying into it. Don’t live the dream! Instead live your dream.
Because we are so caught in the same thinking as the vast majority, thinking the same way as we have been “taught” to think and dream, most people don’t realize that they are not connected with their own inner passions and so their own dream. Many of the outstandingly successful people are seen to be mavericks, people who often didn’t make it through school, people who were often labelled as rebels or troublemakers, especially when they were at school. Yet, these mavericks have gone on to create new trends, new businesses and have come to be leaders whom many look to for inspiration.
And you have the very same attributes as any of those so-called mavericks. Everything is already within, it’s already there. Your only task is for you to tap into it by re-connnecting with that deeper part of you that was pushed down in earlier years, as you learned to play the game and dream the dream that you were taught.
Stop! Get back in touch with you and what you want. What’s your dream?
© 2009 Veronica Lim. www.veronicalim.com
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Veronica Lim coaches and provides strategies for coaches, consultants, and other service professionals who are ready to have more business, more time, more money and more fun, by leveraging their energy, time, passion and expertise. Claim your free report, “7 Simple Steps to Creating Your First Passive Income Info-Product” by signing up for your free Success Kit at http://www.veronicalim.com
Sat, Nov 7, 2009
Something to ponder