I dug this out of the vault of things I wrote when I started my business and was struggling to make it work exactly as I had envisioned. Reading through the old notes, I noticed that what I went through with my business is similar to how a lot of people feel about love. Timelines of when you’ll meet the right person, when you’ll start a family or how life will come together are best left to the heart’s unconscious dream. Read on…
Knees tucked under my chin and buried in a blanket cocoon, I sat on the couch and stared blankly at a spot of chipped paint on the living room wall.
My thoughts held my mind captive – arrested in a wash of inadequacy, pain, imagined loss and fear:
My life plan depends on this next step.
It’s not happening fast enough.
Everyone else figures this stuff out, why the heck can’t I?
I’ve tried everything.
There’s clearly something wrong with me.
My self-defeating daydream was interrupted when my partner, glanced over and saw the sadness on my face. He paused typing on his laptop to take the edge of the blanket wrapped around my knees and tuck it lovingly under my toes, relieving them from the exposure that left them cold as ice, despite the warmth inside the room.
The gesture brought a smile to my lips. There was a warm melting of my mood and a sudden recollection of the past.
This was not my first time feeling so defeated. I’d been here before.
Years before, I stared at the ceiling and wondered when I’d meet the man of my dreams. I felt heartbroken then, too. Wishing that wherever he was, if God would just deliver him to me, I’d do everything right from then on.
I tried everything in my power. I settled for the wrong guys, reached for the right guys, was coy, detached, obsessed, loving, and generous. Followed the rules while breaking them badly. I even made up my own. You name it, I’d tried it.
My strategies for love had been an exploratory adventure for many years.
In the moment my partner wrapped my toes in the loving way he did, I realized I got exactly the love I’d been trying so hard to find. And it had appeared when I was paying the least attention. No matter if it is love, success, health, answers or hope that you seek, there’s one sure-fire way to get what you want:
Create the dream, and then let it go.
Envision it. Breathe it in. See, feel, touch, taste and imagine it in all its greatness. Notice how it will unfold and how life will continue forward in the moments after your dream has come true.
Then, as fully as you embraced it and brought it fully into your heart, you must release it to its path of consummation. Release the “when”, the “how”, and the nitty-gritty details you thought you should control.
Release the necessity of having it at all.
Like a lone seed, set it free to the wind, release your dream to land as it may and grow where it will.
Trust that everything comes in its own time.
Let your mind relax and trust your heart still knows the way.
As Cinderella smartly sang: “A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep. And if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true.”
Its actualization may not look at all like what you imagined, but its roots will be there in the seed of your thought, that blossoms when you let it go and trust it to grow.