Ep09 Transcript: How to Dream Again – Quick Fix Friday

Andrea Vahl: Hello, late starters. I’m your host, Andrea Vahl, and in today’s episode of Quick Fix Friday, I’m gonna dive deep into the question of how do you dream again. It might be connecting with a dream you had before or maybe dreaming a new dream.

Intro: Hello Dreamers. Welcome to the Late Starters Club, giving you the inspiration, mindset and tools you need to start something midlife and beyond. Remember, it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

Andrea Vahl: So in Lin Bruce’s episode 07, she talked about how she felt lost when she was in her mid-fifties and not knowing what to do and didn’t even know how to get out of it. She ended up finding this women’s biking group and took her first cross-country 3,000-mile trip.

Definitely go and listen to that episode. I found it so inspiring. It got me thinking about how do we really dream? How do we really connect with our dreams or even know what we want out of our life when we’re feeling a little bit lost? Lin happened to stumble on something or maybe the universe served her that information at just the perfect time.

But I wanted to talk about a few strategies I’ve used to connect with my dreams. So my favorite thing to do is to journal about things and I love to write my thoughts down into my journal, and I’ve found a couple of great exercises that have helped me a lot. I’ve used a few different prompts over the years.

Number one is to write down everything you wanna do with the rest of your time here on Earth. And it can be things that are really big or things that are small, and it could be things that you think might be impossible or things that you might be already set up to do next week.

So for example, you might write something down like, I want to learn how to drum in a drumming circle. So that would be not too difficult cuz you could go find a class for that. Or maybe I wanna be in a rock band. Feels a little bit harder, right? But don’t, judge, don’t edit that list. Just take a few minutes and write everything down that you can think of. And then when you’ve stopped thinking of things to write down, write down a few more.

The next thing I like to do is write down things that I’m good at or things I really love to do. And it could be things that I’m already using in my business or my life, or things that I’m good at that I’m not utilizing as much. I just wanna write down my favorite skills that I enjoy doing.

Then write down things that scare you. What comes up when you think of that prompt? Things I’m afraid of. So it could be things like public speaking, maybe it’s bungee jumping, anything that scares you, just go ahead and write it down.

You don’t have to write down like maybe like spiders or something like that, you know?

But things that you might do.

Now I want you to pick out a few of these things. Just circle what is coming up for you, what’s bubbling up to the surface or what’s really pulling you in right at that moment. Just circle those few prompts from any of those lists.

And now use the prompt “How might I….?”

And for example, if you pick the thing, be in a rock band, how might I be in a rock band?

And so now your brain has to start thinking about ways that you could fulfill that desire with the resources you have. Or maybe even dream bigger if you wanted to go bigger with that. But how would you even just get started with that thing?

How might I get over my fear of public speaking? That could be taking a Toastmasters group and really learning that skill.

And sometimes what I have found, if you are afraid of something, it might be something that is pulling you in and kind of secretly calling you to do it. So for example, I did improv comedy for years, and I was always like, “Oh no, I’m never gonna do, I’m never gonna do standup, because that’s scary. That’s just, you’re just out there by yourself.”

And so finally something pulled me to do a standup class. I took my first standup class with Christina Hall, and I loved it, loved it. And now I only do standup, and it’s super fun.

I definitely think doing these types of exercises is great to repeat because you can sometimes come up with different things depending on your mood, and definitely just set aside some quiet time to do that. You know, it doesn’t have to even be that long. These exercises can go a lot faster than you think.

Another tool I wanted to give to you is by one of my favorite authors, Barbara Cher, and it’s called, It’s Only Too Late if You Don’t Start Now. And it’s about creating your life at any age and it does really dive into midlife for sure.

But she has a ton of great exercises in there that I’ve been through a couple times, and she asks questions like,

Where am I going?

Did I do the right thing with my time so far?

What do I really want outta my life?

What do I not want more of?

And one of my favorites is, why am I on this planet?

Huh?

And I definitely think that that. The answer can surprise you. What comes out of that question can really be exciting and fun and push you into a new direction.

So those are some of my top tools and tips for getting back into dreaming. And not only getting back into dreaming, I really wanna encourage you to get into action and get into doing so that list I mentioned that you created earlier I would highly suggest that you go in and take some of the easier things from that list, some of the quick things that you could get started on now and get into action.

Cuz what I find is that creativity just bleeds into everything else you do. And when you’re pushing yourself into maybe uncomfortable situations or things that are brand new, it can really spark some energy and creativity for the rest of the parts of your life. So talk to you again soon and get into action.

Outro: Hope that was helpful, and make sure you grab the free guide Top Tools for Late Starters on the website at latestartersclub.com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.