Is It Alright for Me to Dream Again?

Photograph by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

If You're Lost, Learn How To Dream Again

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." — Eleanor Roosevelt

As a child, you lot probably dreamed of wonderful things. And maybe, when you were not dreaming, you lived in the nowadays moment — enjoying the magic of a worry-gratis being.

Just then, as the realities of the adulthood came in, you might take been forced out of that safe childhood experience, and thrust into facing the more challenging tasks of your existence.

One such challenge, is figuring out what you want to practise with your life.

Feeling Lost

In 2015, I quit a decade-long career in sports (the peculiar sport of orienteering. Look it up). The athletic lifestyle was pretty much all I knew, and I had no substitute to fill the at present gaping hole that was left in my life. I had no clue on what to do next, and as a effect, I started to feel increasingly lost.

As fourth dimension went past, without me finding anything, I started to get broken-hearted of the fact that I was lost. And that only fabricated matters worse.

Because, you see, as y'all're filled with more and more anxiety, it gets harder and harder to focus on the practiced things; as anxiety — and the production of stress-hormones — makes yous prioritize negative information.

And this negative information, equally harsh every bit it might sound, is always imagined. Dr. David H. Barlow, a specialist on anxiety disorders, has said that "fear is distinguished from anxiety past beingness nowadays-oriented and relatively certain, rather than future-oriented and relatively uncertain."

Then now, with imagined threats in your mind — picturing worst-example scenarios and all the things that could go wrong — you start to feel fifty-fifty more anxious, stressed and lost.

This is a spiral that goes downwardly. Stress fuels into imagined threats, which further increases the corporeality of stress in your body. At the lesser, you can't fifty-fifty come across past the adjacent 24 hours; you're in survival mode, and can't envision the future — at least not an bonny 1.

Sadly, there's a lot of people living this fashion. Stress and anxiety keeps them from dreaming. They're stuck. Past their own emotions, and in their own minds.

Luckily, however, in that location's a way out.

The Present Can't Hurt You lot (Most Of The Fourth dimension).

Equally anxiety, by definition, tin can't be present-oriented, this is were you'll find your respond. In the present moment, anxiety doesn't exist.

And then, in gild to dream once more, you first have to go nowadays.

Go still. Meditate, exhale, and relax. Plough off the world around you, and feel the stress decrease as you get increasingly nowadays.

As your anxiety and stress wears off; yous can start to dream again — of better things. You no longer prioritize negative information, and you tin can start to picture show a better life.

Anxiety is now replaced with hope and optimism. That'south a great starting point when y'all want to figure out what you desire to do with your life.

Exploring The Unknown

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and peace activist, has said that, "People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."

And then, if yous're lost, it could be that you lot're so used to feeling lost, that you take become addicted to the predictable flow of neurochemicals that feeling lost entails.

Indeed, psychologists have argued that the fright of the unknown is the central fear of all. So, it'due south no wonder thay people stick to what they know. H.P. Lovecraft said the aforementioned thing in his essay 'Supernatural Horror in Literature': "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fearfulness, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Put this way, predictable suffering — feeling lost — is ameliorate than actively dreaming of something new; something unknown. Because, really, that'south what the future is: a big gigantic unknown.

However, if yous get truly present, you remove the feet of the unknown. Yous first to use the future for something else: its endless potential.

In the time to come, everything could potentially happen. You don't know. And so, when yous tap into that, by dreaming — visualizing your future — y'all tin start to shape it as yous want it to exist. With hope and optimism.

Y'all tin figure out things in your mind.

"According to research on mental rehearsal, in one case we immerse ourselves in that scene, changes begin to take identify in our brain. Therefore each time nosotros do this, we're laying down new neurological tracks (in the present moment) that literally change our encephalon to look similar the brain of our future. In other words, the brain starts to expect like the hereafter we want to create has already happened.

If nosotros are truly engaged in this process with passion, we might begin to emotionally feel our hereafter through thought alone. In fact, when we are feeling the emotions of our future — whether that'due south gratitude, joy, freedom, abundance, enthusiasm, dearest, and so on — the creative thoughts in your heed tin can become the feel. As the body receives the chemical signals of these emotions, substantially the body is receiving the signal that the event has already occurred." — Dr. Joe Dispenza

Be present. Dream. Live.

You lot'll somewhen terminate upwardly in the future y'all're creating for yourself. Effigy out your life — your future — in the present, and y'all'll ensure success, happiness, and meaning (if that's what y'all want).

The unknown is potential. Explore it.

Conclusion

If you're feeling lost, yous should learn how to dream once again. Escape the anxiety and the imagined threats, and get present.

Visualize the hereafter, with promise and optimism in mind. Figure it out. Everything is possible, if you allow yourself to dream.

You can explore the unknown.

You can figure out your being.

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Source: https://medium.com/the-ascent/if-youre-lost-learn-how-to-dream-again-7c1d12dfbd92

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