Is something broken?

Recently I spent some time with a friend who shared a personal challenge she was facing. This chat had eventuated because my friend had been watching my family and enjoyed seeing us achieve some pretty amazing stuff together. She was happy for us, truly excited. But in the same moment she looked at her own family and was wondering why they couldn’t do the same.

To be honest, she was surprised to be having this conversation with me. But I wasn’t.

Achieving great things in life comes to those who purposely seek opportunity and are willing to grasp hold of those opportunities when they arrive. Its something I’ve known for a long time. And its something that I realise some people struggle to connect with. This is why I wasn’t surprised to be having this conversation with my friend.

Is something broken?

This question did surprise me, though, and it made me think about the situation differently. Eventually, we agreed the answer was Yes. Something was indeed broken.

The ability to dream big dreams is a gift we are all given as children. When I say this is a “gift” I mean its a natural talent we are born with. Our nature as human beings is to desire and dream. As children we dream of being super-mon or a fireman, or the Prime Minister of the World! We dream of being happy with a family of our own and a home filled with love and laughter. As children, our needs are simple and we have no concept of them not being met.

But then life happens to us.

Some of experience disappointment from unmet needs, others get literally trodden on by life’s circumstances or by the people around them. I heard another friend say the only message he remembers hearing in life up until the age of 15 is “you’ll never amount to anything.” All of these cause us to develop self-protection techniques we use to try and avoid future hurt. Protecting yourself is good, but the trade-off for this is you often squash (and even kill) your ability to dream in the process. I call this “broken dreams”.

Broken dreams are the biggest cause of unfulfilled needs.

As I’ve worked with people this year to help them with their finances, their business and to set their family up for future success I have discovered the most important need is to help them to learn to dream again. This may sound like an easy-fix, but its not. It may sound like a fun process, and it can be. But stepping out into this space when you’ve purposely avoided it for so long is a little scary!

There are some steps you can take to re-build the ability to dream as a family.

Start with some small goals that are going to be easy to achieve. A ‘win’ builds confidence to stretch for higher targets.
Involve the entire family in the process, agree to support and encourage each other, and commit to necessary changes.
Create a pathway to get to the goal. Maybe it’s a target countdown on the fridge or a step-by-step plan.
Talk about the dream often, live in the future expectation of enjoying it. You’ll get there faster!

I’ve seen my family grow immensely as a result of following these steps over the years and now its second nature to us all. We have no problem setting our sights on new adventures and working together to achieve them. And you can, too!

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This is an advert for my upcoming webinar – Dare to Dream Again.

I have put together this special one hour session to purposely encourage you and challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and learn how to dream again. It may require you to learn to dream bigger as well. But I’m not expecting you to do this by yourself. I want to support you in the process which is why I have collected some resources and tools together that will help you to make this step. But don’t delay – its next Monday evening, the 15th of July, 8:00pm – 9:00pm.

I personally believe when you choose to step out of the place you’re in you will begin to see “new” things around you that you have never seen before. But if you don’t step out of the space you are currently in, you’ll never see them.

The people who attend this webinar will be the ones who step out and step into an exciting new future.

You can read more about the content and register for the webinar by clicking the button below.

I hope to see you there!