A Rallying Cry To Your Deep Down Dreams

Whenever I start working with a new coaching client, there’s a one question I always ask them. Among the usual questions you’d expect from an introductory questionnaire (“what to do you?”, “how do you feel about your business?”, “what are your goals?”) there is another: what is your deep down dream that you never say out loud?

I think we all have one, although some may be closer to the surface then others. It’s the dream that you luxuriate in like a deep bubble bath when you daydream, the life that you walk around in and imagine how it would be, if only. The dream that you accept you’ll never chase – “I could never, but wouldn’t it be amazing if…”.

Maybe for you it’s the dream of your business being your full time income – maybe on your walks listening to a podcast you imagine what your answer to the questions would be, you imagine how you’d style your home office and all the different things you’d create if you had those eight extra hours a day. Maybe it’s the dream of a rural escape, of leaving your extortionate suburban rented house and having a view of fields rather than rooftops. Of having space to grow some herbs, to walk in the wild rather than a tamed park, where a neighbour sells eggs from an honesty box and you could sit around a roaring fire.

Why do I ask that question when I start to work with someone? There are a couple of reasons. One is that it gives you an insight into the essence of the person and their feelings on life, like opening the trapdoor to their soul. It gives you access to a part of them that no one else knows, sometimes not even themselves. It is their true North and will direct their behaviour in small or large ways as the personification of their beliefs and desires.

The other reason I ask this question is because so often their deep down dream is at odds with what they’re actually doing. For example, their deep down dream might be to travel and have the freedom to be based anywhere in the world, but they are setting up an online store where they will need to be based in one place to manage inventory. Or they want to spend their time making and creating, but they are offering one-to-one services.

I see through this question how often people take themselves away from their deep down dream – and this is why they’re in touch with me. There is a disconnect in their work that is causing a rub no amount of Vaseline can soothe. The more they are working on those goals that take them away from the deep down dream, the more they feel unsatisfied, demotivated and lost.

Why don’t we follow those dreams? It could be any number of reasons, as individual as you. Perhaps you’re not quite in touch with them enough to even know them and put them into words; perhaps they feel too hard; perhaps you were told once you wouldn’t be good enough. For me it was always that they weren’t for someone like me – it was all well good for others to be doing it, but it just wasn’t something that was in my path.

But here’s the thing. Those examples I used earlier were once my deep down dreams. I was the one dreaming up witty responses to podcast questions and planning my daily routine as a self-employed person; I was the one who longed to leave our rented terrace and have a garden of our own. The only difference is in connecting to that deep down dream and simply entertaining the possibility that it could happen.

I’m not saying you have to believe in it 100%, that everything is possible if only you believe because often the belief is the hardest part of the equation to muster. I’m just saying, don’t discount it out of hand. Don’t treat it as just a dream that you’ll never even take seriously. Just start to plant the seeds that it could happen, that it has happened, and why ­not you? Once you leave the door open, you start to work in a way that moves you, slowly and incrementally towards that place. You start setting smaller goals that are more in line with that deep down dream. And before you know it, it’s right there and yours to work toward.