If you’re just dreaming of what could be

you’re losing out on your true self
JO HAWKINS DONOVAN, For SBT
Did you ever see a dream walking? Well, I did. After many years of coaching, I’ve learned that nearly everyone has a dream.
One of the great privileges of my work is that many people who want to realize their dreams will seek a coach.
It makes sense. Usually those clients are getting ready for major life changes. They know they will be facing the wind. And they know baby steps won’t cut it. They’re looking at a chasm, ready to take a leap across a wide expanse of life. This is one thing that you can’t do inch by inch. Like sky diving, there comes a time when you gotta jump and hope that you packed the chute exactly right and will eventually land on your feet.
I love working with clients who want big positive changes in their lives, clients who are tired of dragging a dream around like a threadbare blanket from their preschool days. As part of my routine now, I ask each client about his or her dream. They may sputter a little at first, maybe embarrassed to be clinging to old aspirations, maybe resigned to a lesser life than they had always imagined. Eventually I coax them into describing in detail just what is the stuff of their dreams. As they do, a different energy level emerges, more animated, closer to their truth. Sometimes I ask if anyone else knows of this deep desire and often hear that they’ve told no one. Not even a spouse or best friend.
Many years ago I worked with a woman whose mother’s constant message was “Don’t make a scene!” Those were even her dying words. This tall, statuesque, passionate woman was born to make a scene and had been walking around pigeon-toed and slump-shouldered, trying to keep her life small enough so there was no chance of making a scene. I encouraged her to “think big”. She began to set aside her mother’s directive – with respect – and to bring her real and beautifully dramatic self out for some fresh air. She told me she felt like an eagle who had been imitating a chicken most of her life, pecking for crumbs. She’s soaring now.
Another client kept shushing his dream, tamping it down whenever it came to mind. He earned an undergraduate degree in finance, an MBA and eventually a partnership, working long hours and not liking most of it. To the world he looked like the epitome of success. Whenever his mind was quiet enough to hear the murmurings of his dream-talk, he felt like he had sold out. Minor – and not so minor – health problems began grabbing for his attention. During our first meeting, he tried to brush off his old dream of teaching history to high school students. We both soon recognized that the dream was insistent and he began to take a serious look at doing a 180 with his life. He’s taking courses now, trotting off to classes with students of all ages, most of them much younger. He’s working toward that teaching certificate and feels great.
Another friend and sometimes coaching client is leaving a thriving practice in integrative medicine to devote two years of her life to medical missionary work in Peru. She radiates clarity of purpose and an enviable serenity about the choice.
Six-figure incomes can dim the lights on an old dream, but I have one client who is a corporate vice president willing to slash that income level in order to get out of big business and into the building trades in some capacity. He’s getting his plan together with the wholehearted support of his wife and four kids. They’re tired of seeing him sleep-walking through life.
Of course, sometimes honoring a dream means a client does what it takes to get out of a going-nowhere job and into the six-figure neighborhood. Frequently it means chucking a salary (with its fake security) and giving birth to a business. Those people know they’re trading one set of problems for another, but they prefer the new set of problems and definitely the new set of rewards.
Then there was my client who was blind to the fact that she was living her dream. She carried a lot of static in her mind, keeping her from realizing that she had exactly the life she wanted. “As a matter of fact, I think I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing,” she told me after slowing down enough to take a wide-eyed look at the life she had created. She traveled the road from discontent to celebration in a few weeks, casting off the heaviness of other people’s expectations, other people’s definitions of success. What fun to be coaching during this process.
To gather the wispy stuff of a dream and fashion it into a goal – I don’t know of anything more energizing. I don’t know of anything more important, either. Think of the people you know who ran out of time. It’s about living your own life instead of being an understudy in someone else’s.
A question that hangs in the hallway of my mind was asked by Langston Hughes in l951: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?”
Jo Hawkins Donovan has a coaching and psychotherapy firm in Milwaukee, and can be reached at 414-271-5848 or jo@hawkinsdonovan.com. The firm’s Web site is www.hawkinsdonovan.com. Hawkins Donovan will respond to your questions in this column. Her column appears in every other issue of SBT.
April 13, 2001 Small Business Times