Planting seeds for dreams

Okay, I know what you’re thinking, I’m right there with you, or I was. Years and years of WANTING to believe that “The Law of Attraction” worked and trying and trying and then wishing I’d never heard of “The Secret.” I came to the conclusion that it was all a bunch of hooey, and I felt cheated and angry and sad. Then some months ago I read a wonderful book recommended to me by my dear friend Bekah, The Wishing Year by Noelle Oxenhandler and something in me saw the whole thing in a new way. (I can’t recommend that book highly enough, it’s a great read too by the way, and when I went to get the link to the book I saw your can get a used hardcover for 10 cents on amazon!) What I came to see was that you can’t just wish a thing and make it so, or write it down on a piece of paper and POOF it appears. You have to put some muscle behind it. Let me say that another way.

I believe in planting seeds of dreams, and I believe with my whole heart that these things can come true, but there are two very important things you must know and understand going in. Like planting seeds in a garden you don’t just put seeds in the ground and then walk away and expect that you will have a lush garden overnight. First of all it takes time, but it also takes a lot of care. You have to watch over it, tend it, and water it regularly. Inotherwords wishing and dreaming is an active, living, growing thing. You plant the seeds and then every single day you DO something to tend and care for them. The last time you wished for something did you put in the work? Did you do something every single day to nurture the dream, to fertilize it? Here’s something I’d like you to try. Write down, at the top of a piece of paper or in your journal, your current dream, the one most pressing in your heart right now. Make it big and bold and colorful. Next, believe in your heart that it might be so. THEN get off your duff and DO something about it. Here’s a good way to begin. Underneath where you have written down what your wish/dream is, write the numbers 1-30 down beneath it. Now, make a list of things you will do, it can be a tiny thing each day over the next month, to help your garden grow, and with each day that passes, each successive day of showing up and doing your part, you will grow in confidence that your dream is on it’s way. Mind, it could take 6 months or a year or longer if it’s a big one but keep at it, never waver, do your one thing each day. An active dream is a living dream, you must keep the homefires burning, you mustn’t let them go out!

Next, and I think this is just huge, and something that is a big problem for people. You have to trust and have an open heart and mind once you cast your bread upon the waters because your dream may come true right before your eyes and you may discount it. It may not be manifested just as you imagined it. You set the ball in motion but a power greater than you, greater than all of us, may see the trajectory of your wishing and know that if its course went slightly in another direction with a slightly different outcome it could serve you better and make you happier in the long run. Going back to the garden analogy think of this, and if you’ve ever had a garden you will likely have had this experience. You plant your garden, you know what you want and expect to come up, but somewhere in the middle of everything will come up something positively glorious THAT YOU DID NOT PLANT. I have had a lone cantaloupe come up in a patch of rainbow chard, a stunning orange Tithonia Torch come up in a field of zinnias, and when I saw it I was overcome with how glorious it was and I fell in love with it. We must put our whole heart into the wish, and then keep it open for just exactly what might come. On the path to your dream you may follow a road less traveled and find out that it takes you to the exact place you’ve been searching for your whole life, but you have to put your dream out there and then follow up, day by day, doing “the next right thing.”

And you may want to examine what is underneath the thing you are wishing for. Say you have a very precise thing in mind, you’ve always wanted, say, a VW Beetle, but when the time comes you may end up with a funky, orange Honda Element (That’s what happened to me!). You never maybe liked orange cars, and nothing is odder looking than the Element, but as soon as you see it you fall in love. And as soon as you get behind the wheel you know you are home, you know this is it, the perfect car you have waited your whole life for! It is perfect! If you had clung to the dream of a VW Beetle you may have turned away from the Element, not knowing your best possible outcome was right before you. I wanted the green Element when I came to looking at them, only an orange one was available, I looked at it askance and then thought, oh well, why not? And I swear to you that car is the love of my life. Perfect for me in more ways than I could have ever imagined. And I love the orange. It makes me smile every time I look at it. I have written about her before. I named her Peppermint Patty as soon as I got her because she was not the prettiest girl on the lot but she was a good girl, not flashy, but mine. I have since known that buying that orange Element was one of the best decisions I ever made!

It makes me smile just to look at it. We are perfect for one another!

So, too, your dreams. Plant the seeds for your dreams, water them daily, and watch them grow with an open heart and mind, they may manifest in ways you could never have imagined, but that might be the real true perfect thing. Trust, and believe. “If you can dream it, you can do it,” but you’ve got to put in the work. Are you doing that? If not, start today, and keep on keeping on. It will be worth the wait…