A Big Dream

There is a very cool, wonderful man named Mark Hoog whom I had the pleasure of meeting. When I was introduced to Mark he had published a number of inspirational children's books with Growing Field including a book called "Letters From Katrina" which I highly recommend you check out.

I attended one of Mark's speaking engagements where he told a story about speaking to three groups of kids. The first group was an elementary school age range. Mark said to the group, "Ok, I want you to raise your hand if you have a big dream and a big goal to support that dream." Pretty much every kid in the room raised their hand and Mark was pleased and not surprised. A couple days later he spoke to a group of middle school kids and he asked the exact same question, only this time less than half the room raised their hand. This was surprising. You can imagine his shock and dismay when he asked the high school students and about 5 people in the entire auditorium raised their hands to say "I've got a big dream!"

I've thought about this story a lot over the last several years.

Now, I feel there are many contributing factors to this, and I think hormones is one of them. In the average high school it becomes outrageously uncool to raise your hand for anything unless, of course, you're already dubbed The Smart Kid. The few kids who raised their hands when Mark spoke were also the kids who weren't afraid to raise their hand when they knew the answer in Geometry or AP English. However, I also think that when kids are young we "humor" them, and as they get older we want to be "honest" and "realistic". When a six year old says, "I want to be an astronaut," we say, "Great!" When a sixteen year old says it, we ask about their grades in math and tell them about how impossible it will be for them to be what they want to be. For most of us, by the time those 10 years pass we've had so many dreams shot down that it's no wonder we give up and lose the race before we run it. We do and become what's expected of us by others which is all too often a shortcoming of who we could've been and who we really are.

I'm going to take some time today to think about my dreams. I know for a fact that there are many that I started and consciously and fairly decided against. I definitely don't want to be a wedding photographer and I know that because I tried it. However, if there are dreams that were squelched by others or that I was just plain afraid of, gosh darnit, I'm going to re-hatch them and I encourage you to do the same.

When someone asks if we have a big dream and a big goal to support that dream, I want us ALL to raise our hands, I want us ALL to be already living some of them and I want us ALL to be on our way to more. If you don't know how to do that, read a book, take a seminar, go within and study yourself, contact me and I'll help you.