Believe in your Dreams

Before I begin my column this week I would like to thank John Lister for his email to me this week.  John said (and I quote)

“I am writing simply to share my frustration in the lack of support for the arts from our government, and even in the local media. Glad to know I am not the only person to be creating something who is struggling to find a way to be paid for the effort. Take care, and I do enjoy your column.”

John’s music is excellent by the way and you can hear it on line at www.g-o-d-i.com, if anyone else would like to write me I encourage it and you can do so at – Sandra@studioonecatsquared.com

So let’s move on to my thought for this week, Dreams.  Actually it may be more correct to say the topic is how to fulfill your dreams.  One things for certain, if you are an artist, you are also a dreamer.  You knew from a young age when you picked up your first pencil, microphone, paint brush or stood on a stage that this is where you belonged.  It was about this time we started to conjure up visions of cheering crowds and large bank accounts.  It was also about this time that some well-meaning adult wanting to save us from disappointment explained to us that this was a foolish pursuit. 

A very smart person once said “You will become the very thing you spend the most time thinking about.”  Watch it though, it is a two edged sword.  If you wish to make a living at your art but spend more time thinking about how it’s not happening the way your pictures in your head look or even happening at all, this will become your reality.   The flip side and this is the side you want to be on.  If we think about being the artist we have always believed we could be, it will happen!  You noticed I didn’t say may happen or could happen I said it will happen! This is not New Age mumble, jumble, it is a fact. 

Anyone who has ever accomplished what they truly believed they were meant to do, have done it or are in the process of getting there.  The time it takes to get there is the bumpy road that will make or break you but it has a purpose.  It is there to test your conviction.  With very few exceptions you will find that for every person who is living by their art there are a million stories that tell how they almost gave up but didn’t.  It is usually at that moment the doors opened and the opportunity they were hoping for came along.  Every person who ever made it to their goal knew they would even when others were doubtful.

There is another step to this believing in your Dreams; that is you must move forward as if it already has happened.  Take the words – if this or that happens, someday I might and I hope to be – out of your vocabulary and replace your thoughts with I am going to do this or I am that.  Start to feel in your heart and soul that it has already happened, even when you are still flipping burgers at McDonalds.

Insecurities and doubt must not be in your thoughts.  When they try to pop up shove them away because if you don’t believe in your dreams how could anyone else? 

This is a big topic that will have to be continued next week, but for this week I will leave you with this; whenever I start to speak about this thing that will happen or that in my life and someone says, “How will that possibly happen?”  I tell them quite simply: I don’t know it’s all a mystery.  Isn’t that great!