You Think You're All That!

Dreams are more important to realize than I think most of us can imagine. We think that it would be nice to achieve them..........but life's not so bad that if we don't make them happen it's not like our lives are going to fall apart. At least our lives aren't as bad as.....(someone else)

We base our lives on those who have what we don't want to make us feel better instead of focusing on those who have what we do want and rising to higher levels of existence and feelings.

What I've found out and continues to be true for me is that by going through the process of pursuing dreams and overcoming the difficulties in achieving them, we become more than what we were, more than what we used to be. If we already were enough, we would have already achieved these dreams.

After achieving them, we also become more as the dream brings new people and new experiences into our lives; people and experiences that would not have come had we not pursued and realized our dream.

In high school my dream was to play football. When I thought of playing I felt so good. I didn't have thoughts of cheerleaders or fans cheering me on or being impressed. This told me I wasn't pursuing my dream out of a desired identity or ego (i.e. I'm a football player). I was doing it for the right reasons; out of a pure passion to play the game because it felt so good to play.

The problem was that I was so small and skinny that I didn't make the varsity team until my senior year in high school. At home I used to make my older sister pretend she was coming down the hallway at school and to stop when she could tell if I had gained any muscle.....

She's so honest that she can't lie and for three years would end up walking from the far end of the basement to right up to me and say, "No. I'm sorry. Not yet."

As frustrated as I was I never gave up, talked to the biggest guys in the gym for advice, and finally had a breakthrough the summer before my senior year. This gave me the confidence and courage to go on and play college ball and study martial arts after, developing something inside me that's almost animalistic or warrior-like in spirit that I became able to take on more difficult and even dangerous situations.

My spirit began driving my life, not my limitations.

On my trip I walked through a large crowd of young men outside a concert at Hyde Park in London. I could have walked all the way around them but I was excited to see something on the other side. So I did, looking them respectfully yet courageously in the eyes as I walked past. After I got through I saw a group of maybe 20 Bobbies huddled together down the path in self-protection.

I thought, "Geesh. Instead of being afraid of them or thinking ill, why don't you try to get to know them? Change the cycle of you-versus-them."

When I got back to my hotel later that night I met a woman who was crying in the lobby. She and her husband had also been at Hyde Park, had a fight where she left and he stayed, and he got mugged.

Although I know any child with a gun or any car with a bad driver can end my life, I also know that by fulfilling a dream (in this case my dream to play football and martial arts) my reality is that I've become much more than I was. Now I can enter situations that seem too difficult and dangerous for many others, and therefore are.

The end result is that I live a different life because of it. I wasn't a tourist on this trip, I was a traveler, an adventurer, an explorer. I explored London and Rome so much that I walked until my feet hurt, and then for hours more. The soles of my shoes are ripped apart, literally. And my experiences were so much more enriching because of it.

Just as I can stand where Shakespeare stood and sit in the same chair at the same table Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist I can walk the streets after midnight searching for the places Jack the Ripper killed his victims. It's the same back home as I sit with those already happy and help make their lives ecstatic, and walk into the lives of the abused and hopeless making it safer and more hopeful.

I do it because it feels right to do it. And I follow that feeling. Life is about feeling good, and feeling and being capable.

Where many say, "That's too bad. But what can I do?" and feel bad, I've become someone who says, "What can I do? Well, if I have enough courage and faith in my ability, I can do ....(this action)." And then I do it, and feel great.

I wasn't born this way, I've become this way; this way of focusing on a destination and making a straight line for it, this way of making real change in the real world....in my own and others.

All from following and fulfilling dreams that I felt beating and pounding in my heart.

You know you've reached this point when someone tells you, "Oh you think you're all that." That's when you should get excited and say happily, "Yes! You're right. I finally do think I'm capable of all that. Thank you! Do you? No? Anything I can do to help?"

All I know is that it feels right to have the courage and ability to believe in myself and others no matter where we are in our lives, to develop the strength to hold on to what could be until it becomes what is, and to explore the world and its people in as many books, travels and ways as I can.

For people who pay attention to what they feel is right or exciting to them, focus all their thoughts on making it happen, and use all their actions to fulfill those dreams.....there is no such thing as "same old, same old" or "same stuff, different day".

Instead, every day is an exciting day of becoming more as new and higher levels of happiness, health, and the wealth we need to follow and fulfill our dreams are created.

As our spirits are filled with an increasing wealth of confidence, courage and capability, these are days spent in Heaven, where maybe not everything is always smooth and easy, but where everything IS possible because WE have become possible......and are becoming MORE possible every day.

That sounds like Heaven to me, and how I run my home and classroom.

Believe me, believe history, believe the facts.....It IS POSSIBLE.....when YOU are! And the more you think you're capable of, the more you BECOME capable of.........You are all that you dream of.