"Make the Dreams Bigger Than The Fears"
Some Inspiration To Rest Into
Happy Wednesday! Happy June! Happy…dare I say…summer?!
The small click, tick, click, click, tick of the roller coaster up towards the brightest and busiest parts of the year keep ratcheting us towards the wild ride down into our next adventures. I’m writing to you with wet hair from my couch after waking up about an hour earlier than I wanted to so that I could swirl around in the eddy in the downtown of my local wave park with my close friends before everyone scatters to the wind.
As I catch up on emails and outline my to-do list this morning, wondering “what will be the most restful way to approach my day today, knowing that I have quite a bit to get done?” I am taking a bit of extra time to watch the videos I normally delete from my inbox.
I’m so glad I’ve given myself that big of extra time.
It’s been an important reminder to choose to slow down, especially as I’m feeling pressed to be “efficient.”
Linked in here is a commencement speech that Maggie Rodgers gives to the class of 2025 at NYU and it perfectly sums up a truth about human behavior. I’m going to misquote her exact words but she says something along the lines of this:
”We have to keep the dreams bigger than the fears.”
And while she is saying this as a keynote address with the explicit intention of being inspirational to a bunch of fledgling adults who are entering into a confusing time in the world, I can’t help but gawk at the brilliance of what she is saying as it relates to the work I am constantly doing with folks around human behavior. Whenever we are changing a behavior, big or small, we must keep the dream bigger than the fear if we hope for it to work.
Shifting Habits, Tendencies, and Difficult Patterns Is A Process
Whether we are working to share something creative, or shift a pesky sleep-health related habit—we are working with a careful, often quiet, ratio.
The ratio goes something like this:
What is the difficulty of what I am currently doing in relationship to the life I want to live into the future?
When we are changing something small, or learning something new that is low pressure, fun and engaging—giving ourselves permission to fail is a no brainer. Getting back up and trying again doesn’t feel like a huge lift, either. In other words, the consequences are low, the dream outcome is casual and medium, the effort feels playful. We can easily lean into the new task that is fun, even if it is unfamiliar.
But what about changing something with a higher level of difficulty or discomfort or uncertainty?
Maybe we’re wanting to change some frustrating health-related piece of our world—like our relationship to sleep and insomnia. Maybe we’re realizing that we love playing and singing on guitar lights us up inside, but our fear of playing in front of other people plateaus how much we feel we are able to share with other people in our world. Maybe, we see how badly we want more ease and rest in our lives, but we have a long history of workaholism to avoid sitting with ourselves in stillness or silence. Maybe we’re heavily involved in organizing a large-scale community project where there is a lot of volatility and personal dynamics to navigate towards a greater good.
When we are changing something big about ourselves, about our lifestyle, or about the external world around us—we’re going to need a pretty god damn good reason to keep failing at creating that long-term change over and over again.
We need to balance the tough stuff with the part that says “this is worth the discomfort.”
In general, the more difficult the long-term change is or the higher the risk to change is, the bigger the reward (or the “dream”) needs to be on the other side of that change to keep us motivated to hack away at it, piece by piece.
Balancing The Discomfort Ratio
When dealing with human behavior changes we can approach this in several ways. Each one of these are different tools and tactics from the toolbox and there is no one that is more right or wrong than the others. A good mix of these things can help keep us on track. In fact, the more variety we can implement, the more likely we are to making lasting, impactful changes we want to see.
We can:
Decrease the risk of change
We can do this by making the change something smaller and more manageable or
Practice the change in a smaller environment
Create more milestones for celebration along the way
Tweak the process of the goal so it’s more fun in real time, even if it’s a long road to shifting it
Reduce fear around the perceived risks by
Educating ourselves on worst-case scenario and practicing directly with what scares us or stresses us out the most
Practice the new task with social and moral support to keep morale high
Giving ourselves grace and permission to fail more often so we get used to the feeling of picking ourselves back up while staying within our window of tolerance and expanding it
This list is by no means exhaustive.
While any of these are a great way to stay on task, when we are talking about big journeys—the lifelong goals towards something great, the most important tool we might have is to let ourselves dream into the biggest, best, most extravagant outcome we could think of—even if we know we’re being ridiculous about it.
Sometimes, inspiration guides our lights more than anything else.
Using our imagination, inspiration, and dreaming-big engages different parts of our brains, nervous systems, stress response systems, and creates new neural connections. While we can’t remain in this high state of creativity all of the time (nor should we try) it is deeply important to give ourselves permission to visit that internal place as often as feels useful. It’s helpful as we revisit our big, expansive dreams regularly to ask ourselves the question: “What is my current biggest hope, dream, and desire for the world? Am I behaving in a way and planting seeds towards that reality?”
Sometimes, when I’m in the middle of a difficult shift, I’ll pragmatically start with “what’ the worst that could happen?” so I can prepare myself and my world around me for the risks I am taking.
Then I will ask myself the next most important question:
“What’s the best that could happen?”
And that often gasses me up to face down my fears or discomforts with a sense of excitement and vigor.
So on this already-too-hot Wednesay, I’ll as you two questions:
What is your current most wildest, cup-filling dream?
What’s the best that could happen?
I’d love to hear what this moves around in you. For more inspiration, check out Maggie Rodger’s 15 minute commencement speech. It’s worth the time. No shame in crying little tears1 of tenderness while watching it—I certainly did.
I hope you’re well wherever you are and that your discomfort ratio oscillates towards manageable.
As per usual,
Thanks for being here.
Dagny Rose
Looking For A Way To Dig Deeper Into Your Wildest Dreams?
Well, while I cannot find those dreams for you, The Art of Rest is having their first Missoula-based community event where you can explore them for yourself! Together we’ll use myth, story, and folklore as a way to:
Rest our nervous systems into community with a sense of belonging
Explore motifs, archetype, & symbology from the tale of The Lindworm
Expand our sense of curiosity and creativity with creative practices, discussion, and reflective questions
This event will be hosted at Sacred Ally on July 27th from 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM. Spots are limited so make sure to register so you don’t miss out.
Bonus is that crying is a nervous system regulation tool. So if you need a touching little connective cry this morning, here’s your excuse.