Following on from last week’s blog, I’ve safely returned from my International Conference in Rome where I not only met some of my old friends, but also made new ones from around the world who inspired me. I enjoyed their company immensely – we had a laugh, lots of fun and not so much sleep! During our time together there were deep, meaningful conversations (or at least some of them seemed so at the time!), plenty of work sessions over-running their time allocations (Italians aren’t noted for precision timekeeping), and temperatures of between 30 and 35 degrees with air-conditioning only in some of the rooms! Coming from Scotland, I can say it was definitely too warm for me. But then I come home and hear the weather hasn’t been very good here at all – either way, the weather can’t win!
So back to the conference and the sessions I attended. It was inspiring that we all wanted to try out new ways of working and learning. There was a lot of risk taking, support and encouragement around doing things differently. Sometimes it worked and sometimes not, but it didn’t matter as people were showing their courage in being visible.
One of the main messages I got was the reminder about the connection between our inner and outer life. When these are aligned we can give life to our vision, our dream, our ideal.
I also know that too many of us give up on our dreams because we listen to our internal and external voices that say to us “Who do you think you are?”, ” You’ll never be able to do that!”, “Come down to earth”, “Stop being silly.” Well those are some of mine anyway; yours may sound different but have the same underlying meaning.
Stop listening to those voices. I’m saying that we need to hold onto that vision, purpose, dream, ideal, and really go for “IT” (whatever your “it” is). It’s normally because we are frightened that we can’t go about our normal life while holding onto “IT”, that we let it slide or cover it up.
In the model of psychosynthesis that I trained and taught in, it’s held that it is ‘both/and’, not ‘either/or’. What I mean is that you can both hold onto your dream/vision/goal/purpose and go about your daily life. No way am I saying that it’s easy – it can be difficult, can cause pain and even discomfort, but at the same time you’ll know you are aligned with something bigger than yourself.
As someone once said, “It’s not because things are difficult that we don’t dare; it’s because we don’t dare that they are difficult”.
So many good things have happened in life because people were not prepared to give up on their dream or vision. I’d love to know what’s happened to yours.
