The Real Power of Our Life's Dreams

My life's dreams are rooted in what I want to contribute to the world, my core values and what I am excited to accomplish. Although my dreams are considered to be rather large and ambitious; they are very simple. However, discovering my dreams took a lot of self-discovery, soul searching, and reflecting over the last seven years (plus my entire lifetime). But since this isn’t a post on how to find your dreams, I’ll leave it as that for now.

The journey of following my dreams has been thus far, both: the biggest struggle of my life, and the most amazing experience of my life. Of course, that is, what one should expect, right?!?! Well, the thing is, I somehow thought it would be much easier. After all, it was such hard work just to figure out my dreams…once I knew them, I just readily assumed following through would be a snap. But, I digress…

Anyway, if asked the question: “Ann, what did you come here to learn” My answer would be “To learn how to trust and to learn patience”. I’ve known this for many years, but never really did anything about it, until I decided to follow my dreams and my calling as an entrepreneur.

I have entrusted my life into the hands of fellow Marines and never thought twice about it because I was entrusting my physical body, not my mind, heart, spirit, and ability to make or shatter my dreams. Okay, I’ll give it to you, it’s a little hard to follow your dreams if you’re not alive and I don’t mean to belittle the value of life…I want to make a distinction between the physical trust we give people like when we get into a vehicle or an airplane and we trust the driver/pilot to get us to our destination safely--compared to the trust we give someone when we fully expose ourselves, our dreams and vulnerabilities.

I had not, in my adult life, until now, placed my trust in anyone person. I never believed it was a safe or wise thing to do. Be it from my childhood or past experiences, I was programmed to always take care of my self, by myself and not rely on anyone for anything. I simply didn’t fully trust anyone and nor was I willing to find out if I could…that is, until the road ahead for my dreams counted on it. I came to a head on collision with the decision to trust the people I needed to make my dreams come true or to prolong the process and potentially end up having to give up. Here was something I had been deadly afraid of all my life staring at me right in the face saying: “It’s either you trust others explicitly and let go, or you forget all about your dreams and ambitions.” Pretty intense huh?!?! I can still feel the shock wave it sent through my body as it sank in.

What did I do?? I took a nap!! I was so absolutely drained by the realization that I just had to lay down and then, when I woke up, I decided to stepped into the world of giving trust and letting go. It’s one scary place, let me tell you, but it’s also a very rewarding place. Here I am, finally doing the one thing I was never, ever, able to do before and knowing that it excites me, because I know it’s bringing me closer to my dreams and being all that I am meant to be.

Patience is a whole other ball game...especially in a start-up business. My impatient ways cause me a great deal of unnecessary stress and disappointment. Being in a start-up is absolutely a waiting game. You do all you can, continuously and aggressively, but it still doesn’t curtail the waiting and having to start over once you are done waiting and things didn’t go your way.

I’m developing patience…while balancing not becoming complacent or too detached. Sometimes you want to throw the F-word around and lose your cool…and that’s when I go to the gym. Being impatient and getting upset or angry never brings about anything worthwhile. This lesson I have to relearn everyday, if not, a few times a day.

I’ve gone through a lot since I’ve engaged myself head first, eyes wide open into the journey of following my dreams. I have felt more frustration, pain, heartbreak then ever before and it’s pushing me out of every comfort zones I’ve ever had and requiring me to be more then I’ve ever been. That is the real power of dreams—they propel us to entirely new levels in every way.

This is also why you are never a failure when following your entrepreneurial dreams…because even if the venture itself were to fail, YOU will have IMPROVED and GROWN!!