What Living Your Dreams Really Means
When I moved to Nashville to make music, I quickly fell into the "commercial side" of it all. I sat on worn out sofas in writing rooms for co-writes where we wanted to write a song that "sounds like radio." Over time, I co-created a catalog of songs that I didn't even want to perform at my gigs. Many of them were soulless, unfulfilling attempts at "writing a hit." While writing a hit song wasn't an unworthy pursuit, I realized that even though my hit song never came to be, it didn't mean that I had failed at my dream. The joy I've received in the pursuit has been matchless to anything else that I've ever experienced. We may "fail" to acquire wealth, fame, awards and accolades, but we don't fail at living our dreams.
Living your dreams is simply doing what your heart directs you to do. It can mean becoming a multitude of things. It's the feeling of pride and satisfaction that we finally stopped ignoring "the call" to become who we know we should be. At times, our dream becomes entangled in the weeds of validation from outside sources, and we think that our dream has failed if we don't achieve certain things. It's those times when you have to recognize that a dream and achieving acceptance, wealth and fame are not the same thing. We can't control how others receive us, but that doesn't mean we haven't lived our dream.
No matter how it's received, there's great fulfillment in doing the work to become whomever you want to be: if you're a poet, write. If you're a fashion designer, wear your designs. If you're a baker, bake beautiful cookies and cakes. And do it consistently until you feel like you've become who you want to be. Who says you have to make a living at it?! It's okay to stop looking around and just do, enjoy, and be.
Far too many of us wake up and allow regrets over what we didn’t do, or what dreams haven’t come true, to unsettle us and disrupt a spirit of gratitude and contentment. I used to be plagued with thoughts of how I could’ve landed this opportunity in Nashville, or achieved this or that success, if I had just networked more or tried harder. I realized this: revisiting the past with present day awareness is fruitless because it can’t change a thing, but the opportunity to use the new awareness in the present is pure gold. It should change the way we approach life.
Our journey has never been predictable because life moves forward in ways that we cannot foresee…perhaps leading us toward paths or new dreams, that which we never saw, but still wonderful things that are meant to be.