Dreaming and feeling momentum towards inspired actions
Dreaming and feeling are internal actions many of us think we have no control over. Have you ever tried to introduce something new to a friend or coworker, only to find them shut your idea down? Or how about someone trying to get you to accept a new view and you feel it’s just too outlandish a thought to believe? Dreaming and feeling can appear as knee jerk reactions as so many are struggling to find better footing in our new era of volatility.
Dreaming and feeling: stuck in a rut or part of our guidance system?
Most people do the same things over and over, react in predictable ways, while at the same time expecting something to change in their lives. They dare more love, more time, more money to come, while never dreaming or feeling for the solution of how any of it will come. We can see signs of stress rising everywhere — just turn on a general media channel.
Emotional reactions become chemical additions. Chronic stress (and the cortisol it releases) favors the ego and we become selfish — self-centered, self-involved, self-important, self-serving, full of self pity. It’s all about the self. Worrying about the self fuels a lack of trust — in yourself and in others. It also fuels focus on unwanted, rather than wanted, things. Allowing emotional reactions to lead our actions creates more obstacles.
Prolonged stress brings on tragic consequences, because, in a crisis, people worry about themselves and begin competing. Let’s say you’re facing a financial crisis or a crisis in a culture, and everyone is worried about themselves, and everyone is reacting to and being led by emotions. They push their way to get to the head of the line. They compete. They force outcomes. They use primitive systems to try to take care of themselves.
Physiology of the brain studies show us that stress and cortisol interrupt the blood supply to the brain and the forebrain in particular. Over time, this creates a gap between the way things appear in our lives and the way things really are. Dreaming and feeling without intentional focus become triggers instead of driving forces.
“Chronic stress has the ability to flip a switch in stem cells that turns them into a type of cell that inhibits connections to the prefrontal cortex, which would improve learning and memory, but lays down durable scaffolding linked to anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder,” writes Christopher Bergland in Psychology Today.
Worry disrupts possibilities and feeds negative momentum.
We’re viewing life in an altered state. We don’t see the possibilities before us. We feel separate from each other. We are competing and striving to get to the head of the line by using our cunning, manipulative, ego-centric ways to get there. We are easily controlled. Fear is very controllable. Competition is very controllable. Anger and war divides us.
This is no way to address a crisis because the worry of self or taking care of self only is the exact thing that enhances the crisis. If we are all doing the same thing, then the culture becomes more divided, it becomes more disintegrated. It becomes more incoherent, and possibility then is not part of the equation.
Of course, true self care, knowing when we must nurture our own strength before helping others, may also seem selfish. But this view is not to the detriment of others. It is knowing when we need to rebalance ourselves before we can help others.
Dreaming and feeling on purpose allows clarity.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t understand any of this. But I’ve always loved exploring dreams and consciousness. One night I had a dream that my father tripped over the bathroom stool and broke a rib. I was still in this dream state when my mother rushed in to tell me my father was having a heart attack on the bathroom floor.
I didn’t panic. I went into the toilet area to see him thrashing on the floor. I jumped on top of him, held down his shoulders, and commanded him not to move no matter how bad the pain. My mother had just enough strength to call 911 before she fell into her own panic state. When the paramedics arrived and took over, I gave my mother first aid, making her sit with her head between her legs until she could breathe properly again.
The hospital ER staff had no doctor on duty that night, and they told us that my father was clearly having a heart attack. It wasn’t until the following afternoon that a doctor confirmed he had no heart attack, just a broken rib. I’m not saying that my intuition is always correct. But approaching any situation with an open mind leads to possibilities that otherwise may be blocked by prejudgments.
Some people argued that I had a calm personality that was good in crisis. I knew that the first aid training I had received, plus all the practice life saving drills we did during lifeguard training had helped me focus on solutions, not problems. It took me years to realize that I was also training myself how to reach for the feeling of solutions and opportunities instead of wallowing in reactive feelings that feed more problems.
Focus on dreaming and feeling as opportunities to enhance good.
In the opposite state of mind, if you practice viewing a crisis as a great opportunity brilliantly disguised as an impossible situation, you create enough space in your awareness to meet the conditions in your environment with a new mind. Now we’re talking about strength. Innovation, creativity and a new way of thinking, a new way of being, means that we aren’t doing the same thing as we did in the past. A clear road forward opens up to us.
Throughout history, singular cultures that overcame their environmental conditions with innovative solutions were considered mystics, saints, leaders and charismatic leaders. They were individuals that saw past the illusion of their present reality. They did not look and judge what is, but rather looked forward to see what could be.
Good dreaming and feeling help us move from fear to the frontal lobe.
When we allow dreaming and feeling, with a focus on good thoughts,, the brain begins to switch. We begin to turn on the frontal lobe that sparks new learning and innovative ideas. We drop suspicion. We stop looking for reasons to defend our fear. We stop asking questions that support our judgments.
We begin to ask better questions. How can I allow new ideas to transform my health? How can we create a new way of being in a world that is falling apart? How can we begin to create a new system to adapt to these conditions? The hardest part about change is not making the same choices as you did the day before.
We think 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day. That number seems outlandish at first blush. Out of all of those thoughts, 90 percent of them are similar or the same as the day before. We don’t even notice we are on a hamster wheel of the same thoughts. The same thoughts lead to the same choices. The same choices lead to the same behaviors, the same behaviors create the same experiences, and the same experiences spark the same emotions, and the same emotions drive the same thoughts.
We call that personality. Your body is a reflection of your state of being. Your personality is directly related to your personal reality. Your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. Personality is not something cut in stone. It’s the display of what thoughts, feelings and actions we give into on a regular basis.
Dreaming and feeling towards better choices, a better world
In order for you to create a new personal reality, a new life, you have to examine the thoughts that you’re thinking and decide if you want to continue thinking that way or choose a new way of thinking. You have to become aware and observe your behaviors and look to see if those habits are something that will support a new future. And you have to look at the emotions that you’ve memorized that keep you connected to the past and decide if those emotions are healthy.
Now we are using thinking, dreaming and feeling as a guidance system where we choose our direction. Which will you choose, to dig in and hold on to past failures or refocus on new, expanded views and opportunities?
Most people try to create a new personal reality with the same personality and that doesn’t work. We literally have to become a new personality. We have the ability to look at any situation and choose how we feel. Are we being led by our emotions, or are we choosing how we react?
People that focus on possibilities are considered geniuses in our society. Albert Einstein, Madam Curie, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, to name a few, they were all thinking outside the box. They were dreaming of possibilities, and all of them were asking questions like, is there a way to create this desired outcome? How can we better our world for ourselves and for others?
When innovators begin to think in new and unusual ways, their thoughts lead to new choices. Their patterns of thought are not difficult to embrace — we simply need to allow ourselves to reach for better thoughts.
New thoughts lead to new choices. New choices lead to new behaviors. New behaviors lead to new experiences. New experiences create new emotions. Now, we begin to transform.
If we are no longer feeling supported, we have to think in uncommon ways in order to adapt to the environment. If we don’t, then it becomes the environment, the external world that controls how we think and feel. We fall victim to the external world.
Is it possible to change the way you think and feel and have some effect in your environment? When people are struggling to survive, they don’t want to believe that. It’s easier to blame external forces when in personal crisis. Inner change becomes very difficult because we’re still worried about the food on our tables, the roof over our heads, and the welfare of our family.
What’s the alternative? There aren’t many alternatives when harboring a state of fear. The best thing to do is to breathe. and reach for any better feeling, even if it’s just thinking about a flower or a butterfly. And then, as we gain more positive inner momentum, we start asking unlimiting questions, like how could I begin to influence my future? What would be a great way to run a business in this changing world? Possibilities in all areas of our lives begin to occur to us. Noticing opportunities become the new focus.
Switching the brain requires something amazing: it requires an openness to knowledge and information. Every time we learn something new, we make a new connection in our brain. That’s what learning is. As we begin to think about new ways of being and we allow new information in, the brain begins to fire in new sequences and new patterns, new combinations. When we allow our brain to work differently, we change our minds. The mind is the brain in action. We begin to get creative, and something unusual happens. We stop living by those survival emotions.
Those survival emotions cause us to look at the future through the eyes of the past. As we begin to design a new way of being, we have to lay down the very thing that we used our whole life to get what we want in order to allow for something greater to take over. It takes courage to let go of the side of the pool for the first time.
Now we’re talking about genius. We are talking about innovation. Once the ideas come, the next step is taking action on your inspiration. Actions on desires create desired outcomes. When we are so settled in the devil that we know, it’s not easy to admit we are acting on fear, bringing more obstacles. Dreaming and feeling with choices of wanted things — not unwanted things — feed inspired action. When we start taking baby steps forward, our world opens up in most amazing ways.
