Some people spit out the word dreamer as if it were an insult: “That guy? He’s just a dreamer.” Wrong! Dreaming—imagining your life as you want it to be—is actually one of the most important skills you can develop.
That’s right, dreaming is a skill, and when I talked about it recently with Daily Health News life coach Lauren Zander, she put it this way—”Dreaming is the best way to learn about your true self and define your core aspirations. If you do it well, you are all but assured of transforming a humdrum existence into the life of your dreams.”
To that end, Zander has developed a unique system for assessing where you are right now and where you ideally want to get to in each of the 18 key areas of life. You may be surprised by the number 18—many people would be able to list only about half a dozen key areas. Yet covering all 18 is crucial to defining and creating the most satisfying life possible, Zander said. She uses this system to great effect with her private life-coaching clients…and now she’s sharing it with Daily Health News readers, too.
Even if your life is pretty good already, Zander urges you to pay attention. “People with huge problems—a truly terrible marriage, the job from hell—naturally dream of creating a better life, and the pain motivates them to make needed changes, though it takes a lot of work. But mediocrity can be an even bigger impediment to dream fulfillment. By convincing themselves that things are basically OK, people fail to make the extra effort needed to go from good to great. They cheat themselves out of true happiness.”
What do you think—would you consider jump-starting a happier life for yourself by learning how to dream? Here’s what to do…
By examining all 18 of the following areas, you’re assured of not overlooking or undervaluing aspects of life that significantly affect happiness, Zander said. The key areas…
1. Body (weight, appearance, how you present yourself)
2. Career/job/school
3. Money (current earnings, amount saved, how finances are managed)
4. Love (do you want to be in a committed relationship; if you already are, what is the quality of that relationship?)
5. Romance (with your partner, giving and receiving expressions of cherishing, devotion, excitement, pleasure, passion)
6. Sex (quality, frequency, shared expectations with partner)
7. Friendships/community involvement
8. Character traits (positives and negatives)
9. Family relationships
10. Time (how well you manage your time, scheduling, responsibilities)
11. Relationship to self (how well you love yourself; how you speak to yourself, e.g., “I am a loser”…“ I am a good person”)
12. Habits/lifestyle (diet, exercise, cigarette/alcohol/drug use, risky behaviors such as speeding, etc.)
13. Home (condition, cleanliness, atmosphere and location of your house/apartment)
14. Personal space (organization of the parts of your home and/or office that are strictly yours)
15. Learning (ongoing growth in areas that interest you)
16. Fun/adventure (vacations, self-indulgent time)
17. Spirituality (however you define this)
18. Health (physical, emotional and mental)
Your first task is to rate your current level of satisfaction in each of the 18 areas, using a 10-point scale. “Be honest. A low number doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. The more honest you are about where things stand right now, the more this assignment can help you get where you really want to be,” Zander said. Use the following scale…
10: Perfect; an unsustainable state of affairs, reserved for fleeting moments of bliss.
9: Extraordinary; highest sustainable rating.
8: Highly satisfactory; a source of pride; significant additional effort would be needed to elevate rating to a 9.
7: Satisfactory, can’t complain; coasting along at “good enough” but not a source of pride.
6: Moderately unsatisfactory; weak but not painful; needs work but doesn’t feel urgent.
5: Consistently unsatisfactory; still not intolerable, but it’s likely that needed remedial work is being actively avoided.
4: Very unsatisfactory, verging on intolerable; requires a great deal of justification and/or denial to continue as is.
3: Intolerable, very bad; getting close to a point of no return.
2: Acutely and unbearably painful.
1: Excruciating; an unsustainable level of suffering reserved for fleeting moments of hell.
Now, for each area of life you rated, write down what the ideal scenario of this area would look like for you. Then write a description of how this aspect of your life currently is in reality. (Yes, this task is time-consuming, Zander acknowledges—but ultimately it will be very rewarding.) For example, suppose you rated “Time” as a consistently unsatisfactory score of 5. Your descriptions might be as follows…
Ideal: My time feels well-balanced. I arrive and leave on schedule, handle tasks efficiently, and move between activities with grace and ease. I have ample time for furthering the career I love, connecting with family and friends, and nurturing my body and soul by playing tennis and singing in a band.
Current: Work takes all my time. I’m always in “fire alarm” mode, rushing from task to task, working late every night and still being behind schedule. Once I get home, I don’t have the energy to talk to my partner, so I watch mindless TV shows before collapsing into bed. I have no time for friends, fun or romance.
For now, don’t obsess about how far apart your reality is from your ideal…just absorb the idea that things can be changed for the better. Still feeling overwhelmed at the prospect? Start by examining just one area of life. After you’ve described your dream and your current reality for that area, move on to another.
Congratulations—you have officially become a dreamer…in the best possible way!
Now it’s time to start making a concrete plan…because a plan is what differentiates an achievable dream from a pie-in-the-sky fantasy, Zander said. Pick one aspect of life to work on first—the one with the lowest score, perhaps, or the one you feel most drawn to or most capable of changing now. Write down all the reasons you can think of for why your current reality does not match your dream for this area of life. For example, for the “Time” area of life described above, you might write…
Why I’m not where I want to be: My job is very demanding. I don’t want to look like a whiner by asking for a lighter workload. My subordinates are incompetent, so I spend my time fixing their mistakes. I’m a perfectionist, so I obsess about work even when I’m at home—which upsets my partner and ruins what little time we do have together.
Next, make a list of actionable steps you could take to overcome these impediments and get from where you are to where you want to be. Don’t censor yourself at first—let your imagination go as you list all the possibilities you can think of. Once your ideas list is done, cull from it to create a step-by-step plan. Include a series of specific interim goals so you can measure your progress toward your ultimate overall goal.
Update your “dream document” regularly. Every few weeks, close your eyes and spend at least 15 minutes envisioning yourself living your dream. Be as detailed in your imaginings as possible. When you’re done, go back to your original written description of your dream and edit it, adding rich new details and discarding ideas that no longer excite you. Try writing up your vision in present tense, as if you had already achieved the dream, Zander suggested—this can feel very empowering and help you move past the fear that you’re incapable of ever making your dream come true. For instance, if your dream is to be a popular yoga teacher, you might write, “I’ve completed 200 hours of yoga teacher training, where I’ve made many interesting new friends and found a much more positive, peaceful outlook on life…I’ve opened a yoga studio downtown with blue walls and big windows that let the sun in.”
Tell the world. The more people you tell about your dream and your plans for making it real, the more likely you are to succeed, Zander notes. So talk up your goals, your strategy and your progress. Create a system of accountability that involves trusted friends so you’re forced to share periodic progress reports (good and bad)…and ask those friends to nudge you if you aren’t reporting in as promised or if you aren’t meeting your interim goals.
Stay the course. Achieving a truly worthwhile dream—building a business, writing a book, adopting a child, losing 50 pounds—may take a long, long time. Don’t let yourself get discouraged if it doesn’t happen in a month or a year. As long as you keep working at it every day, you will eventually get there…or at least get a lot closer to it than you are now. And remember to value the journey as well as the destination, Zander says. “Every single day that you are doing the right thing for yourself—the thing you want more than anything to do—brings you a day closer to living your dream.”
