The Dream Stealer
The Dream Stealer by Alan Forrest Smith. One long dark night I had a dream. A dream so clear that I knew if I wrote down the dream my life could be so different. The dream was a story of success. I saw my own struggles but I saw myself winning. The struggles and hardships and pains were all there yet at the very end of the dream I heard a voice say to me, ‘I am going to steal this dream from you, wake up now” and when I woke, the knowing of the dream, the feeling of the dream was all still there. Yet the details had gone. Now for months even years I have been trying almost everything to recover this dream because the key to my future is in that dream. Have you ever done that with a dream and really struggled to recover the content of your dream? You by your very nature are a dreamer, we all are. Some dreams are based around what it is you wanted to do in your life, with your life and directions in your life. Over the years you talked, planned, shared and created small spaces and places to travel through in pursuit of that dream. In the beginning the dream was clear, you were sure you knew it could become a reality for you. And maybe progress for you has been great, really great yet I wonder a little, just a tiny little bit … did the man come into your dream and steal your dream? You see the dream has strange affect on us, passion, excitement and the faith of the unseen, forces us to believe the reality of the un-arrived. Imagine being a child again knowing you can be an astronaut, a pilot, a superstar singer or sport star. Can you remember thinking like that as a child? Anything was possible; nothing was impossible, how could that dream not be possible? The mind of a child has less clutter, less experience and is bursting with the possible. It’s clean, empty and pure, it has to be shaped, formed, directed and molded. Some would say, ‘built on dreams’. Yet despite having layers of life on yourself there are moments for you where once again you can see and feel the possibility of your dream being realized. So what was your dream? Wealth and freedom? Job and lifestyle? Salvation from an endless cycle of the same old life results? New direction, new paths? I’m asking you to ask yourself what was that dream you once had? Yet there is a bigger question here and it’s this … ‘How close to that dream have you actually gotten?’ Like all things, everything can be measured even the intangible so what is the measurement of the reality of your dream from six months ago?
Realization?
Stabilization?Change in directions?
Information collecting?
Re-routing your path?
Actionable steps?
Wealth based result?
New thinking?
Cleansed new you?
For some wealth is the driving force. They relate wealth to happiness yet the truth is I have met more miserable wealthy than I have moderately wealthy and genuinely happy. Wealth can bring a whole new set of miseries yet I would rather have cash in the bank than none. So the balance of what is enough for you must be thought about? Wealth has more than one purpose of being able to spend. A new car quickly becomes an old car. A new bag quickly becomes last years bag. A new home quickly becomes too small a home. Yet wealth can give you peace, stability, it gives you certain freedoms, gives you abilities, it gives you balance to focus on the important things in life rather than the pursuit of making money. Making money and getting rich is not a place of peace in fact it is an unattainable goal. Huge wealth comes to those that focus on a dream only. The wealth is simply a result of the dream. Interesting interview I read over this weekend with football star David Beckham. Asked about his wealth he said ‘I have no interest in money whatsoever, I never have, I am only interested in being the worlds best footballer’ … yet the wealth was a reward for his dreams fulfillment. Wealth as an idea has been plagiarized and distorted by those that feed the masses as an ideal to be reached. Of course this has never been any different since the age of man but more so than ever today. Yet as I write to you the news papers are full as always with the bitterness, divorces and full scale battles of the rich and famous destroying each other over who gets what and cash. One story reads about a woman leaving her £250 million lifestyle to go and live with a man with less. Another is a bitter divorce of UK royal relations fighting on twitter as she runs away with a poor want to be pop star. Another is a man that claims his wives endless ravings have driven him out for good despite her riches and lavish lifestyle. Of course, just three stories out of many! A man making five million a year is still a poor man if he spends six million a year. A man with £250 million in the bank is still an unhappy man when the love of his life walks out with another man. So wealth is a perspective based around what is best for you and no one else. For others the dream of leaving endless hours of a working life that is more like slavery is the dream to be pursued. To awaken at 5:30am then have to be at your employers office one hour away for 7am only to work non-stop for 14 hours to then struggle to find the energy to be able to drive back home in the evening only to repeat the same old routine. It’s an interesting thought to have in mind – is it the volume of hours for low pay in that job that is causing the misery? I ask that because the fact is as a self-employed entrepreneur myself and as a person that has known, does know and has associated with lots of entrepreneurs we can easily work 20 hours non-stop and feel good, very good about doing it or is it more of a truth that it’s simply a job that doesn’t match our deeper intention feelings or dreams of what we want for ourselves? And for others the dream can simply be a time to refresh, reboot and re-ignite a life that has become too hard, too stale, to boring, non-exciting, too much a struggle. Bills still stacking high after 25 years, same hours, same boss, same moans and groans. Yet the bigger question is how did you arrive in that place? Sometimes we have to really understand how we arrived in the place we are at right now can reveal the key to removing yourself from that place. So ultimately dreams are about you and you only and that’s where this goes back into your mind and your questions. You might have had a dream but were unsure about it’s outcome yet the dream might have felt do-able, plausible, very easily reached. You saw yourself at the outcome lifting the prize, seeing the victory yet ask yourself this … have you had a visit from the dream stealer? He arrives without you knowing, without you ever seeing and speaks so silently, so softly that you’ll barely notice he is there. He is the master of doubt, the king of suspicion and the feeder of distractions.
Do you now have doubts about your dream being accomplished?
Are your suspicions of your dream being arrived at getting stronger?
Are you finding more and more distractions have been arriving in your life since your dream began?
Has the dream started to get faded, misty and fogged over?
If so, why is that? Let me share a story with you. Once I had a dream of going to the Amazon jungle. I had no idea how, no idea when, no idea if yet I knew I wanted to do this in my life and knew I could do it. I told my first wife this dream only to be told that she would rather spend two weeks frying on a beach in Spain. I told others only to be told it was a ridiculous thought and why on earth would anyone want to do something as crazy. They would say 'what if you became ill, who would help you?' Yet I had no thoughts or intentions of being ill I simply wanted to go. 'What if the plane crashed over the jungle itself how would you survive?' Yet I had no thoughts of plane crashed just the dream of being with a real tribe and seeing a real jungle. 'What if a wild animal or a strange very un-western disease whilst out there attacked you?' I had no intention, dream or slightest thought of anything like that taking place; I simply had a dream of experiencing the nature of life. Twenty years later that dream arrived and came true. I had no time clock on the dream I simply knew I wanted it to happen. It happened in its own time. Do you have a time clock on your dream? Has that clock been frustrating you and making you more impatient than ever? Yet the reality of life appears to be things arrive in life when they are ready to arrive sometime over 20 years later! There are always excuse but are those excuses part of a pattern that has been masterfully veneered over your life so far? Life is the dream stealer; life will cover you, layer over you, battle you, test you and even weaken you if allowed. Yet once we understand life – our life – we can be made stronger, more resilient and more focused. Conditioning and the life mantra repeaters will tell you to stay-in-line, don’t cross the boundaries, never leave the regular yet it doesn’t take a genius to notice that the regular no longer works. The way we live today is more complicated than ever. The demands from the consumption machine if more powerful than it has ever been. If we start to feel left behind we start to feel inadequate even if we have everything in our lives that gives us genuine happiness. So I am asking you today to re-visit that dream from when your dreams were clear, had clarity, had life and joy in them. The very best in life to you. Alan Forrest Smith. Author Alan Forrest Smith is the creator, thinker, writer of the book Escape from Zoomanity – More about the book here.
