Dreaming Our Dreams Into Reality - Part 1

In a world where we are bombarded by technology and a need to do more, go faster, and have instantaneous results, how do we go about accomplishing our dreams?  Have our overstimulated brains and minds become so reliant on TV, the internet, and smart phones to tell us how to think that we have forgotten how to use our own imagination?  Or do we use these tools to help us expand our creativity?  I ask these questions and attempt to answer them just as much for myself as I do for you.

Imagination seems like a great place to start.  As William Arthur Ward said, "If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it."  Is it that simple?   

To put it another way, the Wright Brothers have been credited with saying, "If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance."

Wright Brothers Memorial, North Carolina

If so then maybe the starting place is every morning just before we get out of bed or every night before we doze into a blissful semi-comatose state, we take a few minutes to create our next painting.  We feel the textures.  We smell the paint itself.  We visualize the picture we are painting in our head.  We see the end result (in this case the painting itself hanging in a gallery or a museum).  

If our longtime dream has been to be a dancer, we would use all of our senses to hear and feel the music, our body flowing with it, the roar of the audience, and the freedom of pirouetting around the stage.  

Maybe it's more simple than that.  Maybe our only goal is to be a better parent or teacher or co-worker or neighbor so we imagine how our day will go.  We see how we are interacting with others in a positive way.  We see ourselves as light and happy.  The sky is NOT the limit.  

Take it as far as you would like and then take it a step further.  

Instead of dreading waking up tomorrow for fear that "Lucy" will dump yet another of your favorite perfumes down the toilet for the fifth time this week, see her perfect angelic face 

holding the perfume over the toilet but deciding to make another choice this day and she hands it to you smiling.  You dab a little on her wrists, paint each other's nails, and create a spa day.  You both have such fun that you plan a girl's day once a month, maybe sooner!  Voila!  "Lucy" is happier and so are you!

School is out of control.  You fear that every child walking upon the earth with a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD has landed in your classroom, and every night you worry yourself to sleep wondering who will do what this time.  After all this has been the scenario day after day since school started.  Why would it be any different now?  

Change it up!  Worrying is enforcing what you don't want.  Spend that time thinking about what your students and you would be like in a perfect world.  Be silly if you want but do it in a way that will be conducive to all.   

Are you getting the picture?  Imagination and creativity does not have to be used only for the great and wonderful achievements that have been on our to do list practically since grade school but also for the every day, mostly appearing mundane activities.  We don't have to be a re-run in our own lives.  We can create the lives we choose every day, brand new.  Hooray for us!

Please don't think because I'm writing about this that I have it all together.  I am a work in progress, learning just like you, and some days are better than others but, in the end, I only have myself to thank for the good, the bad, and the outright ugly.  This is not to say I am an island unless I choose to be, but that I am creating it as we all are, which is marvelous!  If I am creating it, it means I also have the power to change it or re-create it. Fun times!  We get to choose a new day EVERY day!