Never Ever Abandon Your Dreams – But if you did

I gave up a dream once and it was the biggest regret of my life and to this day, is still one of the few things I regret about my life. When I was at school, I absolutely loved drama and performing arts. Acting, singing and dancing around were my passion. I was pretty useless at everything academic and most other things but performing arts I adored!

When I was in Junior school, we had poetry reading competition. We had to a read a poem by Spike Milligan. The competition was that whoever read out the poem the best would read it out in front of the whole school and the parents and all the teachers too. It was a wonderful poem, I don’t remember it that well and but it was something to do with either catching a really big fish or being caterpillar that was getting bigger and bigger from eating so much! Anyway, we had a mini competition first, in front of just our class. We all had the opportunity to read. I read mine out in such a funny way with all the actions and emotions coupled with the poem that my teacher said I was the winner outright and I got to read it in front of the whole school!

Another time at Junior school, we were going to put on a play called Pedro’s Revenge. I auditioned for the Role of Rocadura, a gangster who controlled the small town in Mexico. None of the other kids could do a rough Mexican accent like I could so I got given the part immediately! I remember that during the play I got to wear a Trilby hat and my older brothers pin stripe suit with gangster style shoes! I loved playing that role and to this day I still have some pictures of me in that play. I remember that there were also reporters there from the local papers and they wrote an article about the play and put us in the paper! 🙂

I did a few more plays at Junior school and even at secondary school too. When I got to college, as I had pretty much dropped out of high school an not completed many of my exams, I decided to retake drama at college too. While there I also did some productions as part of the drama club whilst retaking my drama exam.

The reason that I became such a high school drop out was because I was taught that the world was going to end very soon; and I believed it! 😆 I was also taught that any big decision I was to undertake in my life should go through our spiritual elders and so I approached one the spiritual elders, I asked her, I want to become an actor and I want to do drama. She said to me “no, that world is full of vice, go and do an office job.” Which is pretty much what I did. I believed her and I followed her advice, left my performing arts path and went to get a basic admin job.

As much as I’m sure she meant well, I wish that at that point in my life I had the courage to follow my own path. I know that that past can never be changed but what I do know for sure is that being on stage, acting, dancing is something very much that I’m yearning for. Just because I gave up on my dreams then it doesn’t mean that I cannot pursue them now!

It’s never too late to follow your dreams. If they truly mean that much to you, you will find a way! It doesn’t matter if you have 4 children, a mortgage, a high paid job that and is your only source of income, other commitments, whatever you think it is that is truly holding you back, is only your own lazy mind conjuring up reasons why those things cannot be done. There’s ALWAYS a way. I can’t possibly go over all the ways in which you can get around all the challenges that you might be facing at this particular moment in your life. What I can do is tell you firstly that if you do have a dream and that you have been putting it off for whatever reasons, ask yourself firstly, is it truly your dream if so many excuses have been getting in the way? Is it something you truly want or is it just something you have nice thoughts about and “it would be nice if I could do it”. If that’s your only feeling towards it then maybe it’s not your dream and maybe you need to find a new dream.

I for one have many dreams and aspirations, not just the one. And in the course of discovering my dreams I have found some of the ones which were just “nice ideas associated with nice feelings” and separated them from the ones which have an extremely strong pull because I feel deep down within my soul that, that is what I want to do.

The way to separate those things that are “that would be nice” kind of things, from “I must achieve this no matter what” is a two step process which is as follows…

1. Make some quiet time and focus on you. When I say that what I mean is our focus is more often then not on thoughts of the things we have to do during the day, the people we have to email, the household chores that need to be done. Step away from those thoughts and bring them back to you. Remember that those things are not you, they are the things you’ve chosen, now who is the real you? What is your spirit, your core, your deepest feeling of being that you can come to? (This in itself, is a powerful regular practice you can adopt for many purposes and not just this.)

2. Once you have gotten to a position of getting closer to your core, ask yourself some rapid fire questions without thinking about the answer. Get a pen and paper handy and write the first thing that you feel like writing without thoughts getting in the way. As for the rapid fire questions, you can ask yourself some random questions to begin with e.g. what is my favourite colour? Do about 5 random questions and then throw in a more serious question related to your life into the mix. For greater effectiveness, do this process with a friend or someone you have a lot of trust in and have a good rapport with. A good way to tell if you’re answering from your core is to get the person who is asking you the questions to keep an eye on your eyes. If your eyes move before you’ve answered, you’ve thought about the answer. Look the person in the eye and answer as rapidly as you can without giving the question any conscious thought.

Don’t be afraid if your dreams change. It just means you’ve grown, expanded yourself and you want to explore something different. Whatever happens though, don’t abandon your dreams for one of the silly reasons that tend to permeate our lives these days, find some courage and get your quizzed with some rapid fire questions to find what out what experience your deep subconscious is yearning for.

Dream big!