Sometimes we have a dream and everything about it feels so right that we decide we need to make it happen.
So much so that a year of blocks can go by and we manage to explain away every one of them as just unfortunate, deciding if we push harder we can make this dream happen.
I recently found myself wide awake at 2:30 one morning in absolute panic about the amount of preparation work (time) and associated costs (money) required to make my dream happen. I had no choice then but to put on the brakes and rethink everything. What was wrong with my dream that it was causing the universe to create so many blocks? It was tough question but, hey, I was wide awake now so lets go over it.
Working backwards through the spiralling costs, I managed to find the root cause. What if I let go of one aspect of the dream but keep the rest?
So I did.
Suddenly, the mind blowing series of things I would have to do first just melted away. The overall cost came back down to affordable and, before I could even catch up with it, I had dates in my diary.
Now, it is tempting to beat myself up and say that I wasted a year chasing a dream when all the signs were that it was wrong. But I choose not to see it that way. Everything that happens is a lesson to be learned. Or, to put it is marketing speak, every block is an opportunity! In retrospect, I actually learned a lot of useful stuff along the way.
Here’s a bit of philosophy:
Karl Popper suggested to us that the place where we are standing is Point A. Our goal, whatever it is, is at Point B. However, sometimes we find that going directly from Point A to Point B encounters a road block of some kind causing us to travel there via Point C. Having arrived at Point C, Popper tells us, it is vital to revisit the plan because the view from Point C may show us that Point B is no longer the destination we need.
I confess that I had gone from Point C and on through Points D, E, F, and was staring at Points G and H before I finally realised that Point B was not the dream I thought it was.
I should have listened to Popper.
By the way he also said: “Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
Cool, huh?