what i learned from a weird recurring dream
so i have to tell you this amazing story.
for years, i have been having this weird recurring dream. it’s not a dream in the sense that something actually happens and i can recall the dream afterwards. rather, it’s an intense feeling that i wake up with – a feeling that i have forgotten something or lost something really important.
over the years it has varied – at times i feel like i’ve forgotten to take care of pet living in my house and i wake up in a panic until i remember we don’t have pets. other times i feel like i have forgotten to take care of an important task or have lost some important files – i wake up feeling panicked but can’t for the life of me think of a single important task i was meant to do.
and the one that happens most often is waking up in a panic that i have lost my wedding rings. i had a loose diamond so for a while i didn’t wear my rings but they were always there in my jewellery box. i’ve since had them fixed but don’t wear them at night anymore. i will wake up in the middle of the night – sometimes actually standing at my closet searching through my things – freaking out about my lost rings.
so even though the situation is different it is always about having lost or forgotten something and it is always that same panicky, confused feeling that i wake up with.
at the beginning of the year i had this urge to ask my friend clare about it. clare is an intuitive (she talks to her soul guides) and she helps women in biz gain clarity and get unstuck as they try to navigate this crazy journey we are on (you can find her here – she is amazing!). i thought maybe she & her guides might know what was up with this weird dream-but-not-really-a-dream thing.
i want to share with you what they told me:
“This is the amygdala part of your brain triggering off a series of flashing *OMG I forgot this* moments - getting your attention just before or during sleep when there is room for the message to get through. It’s about…
…forgetting to be you
…forgetting who you were born to be
…forgetting that you are worthy of love and connection with people and true monetary success
It’s a message from your soul but triggered by your amygdala (the flight or fight part of your brain)
Your role, if you choose to accept it… (guides being funny here hee hee) is to remember who you were born to be.”
holy smokes. when i read that i nearly fell out of my chair!
but damn… who was i born to be?
what am i here to do?
what is my soul purpose?
i don’t actually know how to figure out what my soul purpose is.
but what i did know was that i had this idea to talk about the lighthouse as a symbol for women in biz. it wasn’t fully formed – i had no plan for how to fit it into my business or what the heck i would do with it – so i put it on the back burner because i had other stuff that i had to get done first and i didn’t really think it could be all that important, it was just a whim really.
but the dreams made me realize that i had to listen to that feeling in my heart that the lighthouse was important, listen to the nudges i kept getting to share the lighthouse story. once i started working out how to do that, the dreams stopped.
and then one night i woke up in a panic about losing my rings again! i tried to think about what could have triggered it and that night i had been at a local networking event. when someone asked me what i had planned for 2014, instead of sharing this little nudge of an idea about a lighthouse, i talked about all of the “logical, sensible” things i had planned. and then that night i dreamt about lost and forgotten things again.
wow. ok. message received.
now when i get the dream i wake up and say “ok ok i hear you!” and i try to think about what my heart is nudging me to do, what things i have put on the backburner again.
i definitely don’t have this all figured out. i still have this fear that i will waste my time on something that no one will care about or that won’t help my biz or that won’t be profitable. i fear that i will do the wrong thing or make the wrong choice about what to focus on. i fear that i will look like a complete fool.
but i think that if i can get into my heart, and go with where that leads me, then i will get a little bit closer to who i am in this world and what i am meant to do here. to make an impact on someone, to know that i made a difference.
isn’t that what we all long for?
clare says that our business journey is a reflection of our soul journey and that really makes sense to me. when you think about it: every win, every obstacle, every bit of growth, every tiny action we take feels so huge! we are actually building so much more than a biz, we our building the thing that will help us share our purpose with the world.
and to figure out what that purpose is, i think we need to just keep moving. keep taking little steps. keep talking about the stuff that is in your heart.
every time we do, we get a little closer.