What Comes Before the Dream
On the steps I skipped, the walls I hit, and the quiet relief of finally seeing myself.
One of my friend and I are hosting a vision board lab on July 28th. I’ve been thinking about how I want to approach goals, vision, and dreams this month of July.
So today I will reflect on the clarity before the vision.
When we think of someone single who wants to get married or have kids, you know there are a lot of steps before that “end” goal. Or if we want to travel somewhere, there are steps before being there. It’s the same for anything we would start, or want to start.
But somehow, we forget that is the case.
We think from 0 we can jump, in one single jump, to 100. We want someone to tell us “how to jump from 0 to 100” because no one likes the in-between. The wait. The lessons. The figuring out.
Why are we living in a world where people want only certainty, straight lines, and control? Why do we want to go faster than time?
What if we were only allowed to achieve one big goal in life? And when we achieve it, we succeed the way we thought we wanted to, and then we are done. Done.
No more adventure. No more discovery. No laughing at ourselves. No new pet. No new friendships. As if we arrived too early at the end of our road.
What now?
If you skip steps, those steps will accumulate and build a wall between your goal and yourself.
When we want to get married, we have to date first. Get our heart broken. Break some. Be deeply in love. Make mistakes. Understand what we don’t want and what we do want. Figure out who we are as individuals and in a relationship. Maybe discover you are more attracted to the same sex. Maybe realize you have a really hard time opening up.
Those are steps. Steps to get you to meet a person where you feel ready to do the work with them. To do the hard part. To show up anyway. And maybe you realize you don’t actually want to get married.
Because you thought that’s what everyone was doing, and you never realized you had a choice…
Where You Are Is the Work
So before you build a vision, a dream, a plan, you need to know where you are. You can’t skip that step. Otherwise you keep going back, in some way, facing things you thought you had grieved, moved on from, healed. By making the same choices and mistakes.
Often we over-commit to ourselves. Because who would dare to start small? And be honest with ourselves on what we can actually achieve today toward the big goal.
When I work with clients over our months together, it often happens that their goal changes, evolves, or they realize something needs to be prioritized in order to achieve their goal. I have to say, it’s often because the person needs a break. They have been non-stop being active, surviving, helping others, working hard to pay the bills, working hard to get a promotion, working hard as if there’s a promised moment when it will all end and they will finally be able to relax and be rewarded.
They talk about balance. They talk about building in a way that is healthy. But they forget to prioritize themselves.
Maybe the quote “no pain, no gain” isn’t about physical pain. Maybe it’s about the mental pain of doing something uncomfortable.
The Opposite Direction
Clarity, awareness, presence, consciousness: whatever you want to call it. It’s the only way to really see yourself. To finally listen. Listen without the habitual noise. We have it all. We learned skills. We are where opportunities grow, and we look the other way. Into someone else’s life. Into comparison. As if someone else knows better than we do.
Lack of clarity, awareness, consciousness, makes you go in the opposite direction. A total panic. A disconnection from your body. Unconsciously, you go into automatic mode and start making drastic changes: cleaning, buying, canceling all the plans.
You circle back, but you don’t return to where you were before the panic. Along the way, you lose some confidence. You disconnect from your vision, your dream, your goals.
Until you wake up one day and you can’t avoid yourself anymore.
It Became Real
Without clarity, you will not be able to face the challenges along the way to your goal. The jobs you will take or keep to save money. The inner work. The tight budget. The feeling that you are selfish for wanting a life you love after years of putting yourself second just to survive.
I have been there. After I decided I would move to NYC, five months before leaving, I almost lost my job. I was tired. I didn’t really like it. Too much drama between coworkers and the boss. I just wanted the change now. I had to shake myself to remember my “why.” Why I took those jobs. Why the pain was worth it.
When I think back on what took me so long to change the trajectory of my life, maybe I wasn’t taking myself too seriously. What I really wanted for myself. As if what was accessible to me where I was, was my only option. And dreams were just dreams…
I also think I always had something else to do instead, like paying my bills.
Both my parents moved away from where they were born and grew up. My mom left her small village in the Swiss mountains to move to the big city, where I was born and grew up and lived for 34 years. My dad left Rome, Italy, encouraged by my mom to come to Switzerland.
So I did grow up knowing I could live somewhere else than where I was from. It has always been my reality. And that, I think, is an important detail. What people often forget is that it’s sometimes easier for some because they are already living in that energy, in the possibility. It’s not just a crazy dream.
The same thing might be happening for you, too, while taking steps toward a life you love, but still feeling challenged to fully engage in it.
As it’s not yet a reality.
I am in that reality.
What I share is my reality.
It’s not something I want to just help people with because I believe in a world where we could potentially really enjoy our life.
I am the representation of it. I did the hard phase. I was scared, I was stuck, depressed, and I got my “aha” moment that got me out of my misery. That changed everything. And then I had a clarity phase where I made a lot of research and planning. I looked at what I needed to make it happen. And I firmly decided and I shared it out loud with people. It became real.
The Unkind Good Luck
I passed the fear of missing out, or that it will always be hard and will require so much energy and concessions. Fear of being out of my bubble of familiarity, habits, “Swiss comfort zone” and that anything else would be terrible. I was waiting for approval, someone to tell me that what I wanted was a good choice and it would be OK. I faced my lack of clarity because “I want to live in NYC” isn’t clarity. It’s just an image, an idea, a vague concept based on my experience as a tourist. And for sure some fear of failure.
And you know one thing you also have to understand, some people will not cheer you on for trying something different, for pursuing yourself. Some will be jealous, some will always be ready to give advice or ask a stressful question. When I shared about leaving for NYC with some people and I was telling them I wasn’t an expat, I didn’t have a job waiting for me, I would be a student and I would be starting over. Very proudly and excited. I often received back a “good luck” with a cold and unkind tone.
Tired of Myself
My lack of clarity cost me. I waited until I was tired of myself. Tired of being unhappy and “not knowing why.” I was not interested in challenges. I would rather have stayed home with my cat than socialize. Feeling how disconnected I was from myself. I spent a lot of time in that zone while I could have at least started to get clear.
Finding clarity isn’t very complicated. We often make it more complicated than the situation itself.
What if nothing changes from where you are today?
Why are you more focused on what you could lose than what you could gain?
In life, you will often know the joy of being on the same page and supported by the people around you. But it will happen more than once that you will have to disappoint someone, no matter how much you love them, in order to not disappoint yourself.
Where are you, friend?
With gratitude,
Nina
If you’d like to join our lab on July 28th.
On finding clarity to create a future vision, through journaling questions, meditation, and different ways of making a vision board.
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Thank you for the restack Meg! 🫶🏼🌺
Thank you for sharing all this, Christian. Your story carries weight and colors, and that's why your beautiful soul is deep. 🩷 Do you regret not being a lawyer? I find the work we do, standing for our clients, having their back, getting their goals to happen, in a way has some similarities with what a lawyer does.