“You have dreams. They will come true – I ask you when?”

William H. Danforth, 1931

When I was a little girl, I remember my grandfather telling me about my mental alarm clock. He said that all I had to do before I went to bed was decide what time I wanted to wake up, then presto! I would wake at that exact time. 

Today, there are tons of books out there advocating the mind over matter approach … Envision yourself having already achieved what you want to achieve, and it will be yours.

The very idea makes me realize how pessimistically I think about most things in my life. It’s easier to envision something not going our way than to risk the disappointment of counting on something that doesn’t materialize. But dreams, I think, are as much a mental exercise as they are an emotional whimsy.

Any of the great thinkers will tell you … you have to keep your eye on the ball. Your mental energy needs to stay directed on the outcome that you want to achieve, in order to bring it about. But you also have to invest some time and energy into pursuing that dream.

Once we become a parent, it seems that our personal journey gets derailed for a few years, at least, in favor of the family journey. And I think that’s a good thing. There are deep rewards that come from letting go of our own agenda in order to create this new little community in our life.

But at some point, we need to reconnect with the dreams that exist for us outside of our home and family.  I have been contemplating this in my own life, and I know that other women with school-age children are doing the same.

A number of years ago, I befriended a winemaker in southwestern France. I lived with his family while doing an internship on wine, and he not only became my mentor in the wine-making process but also in life. I will never forget one evening when he said to me, as we were discussing my goals after school, “If you can dream it, you can do it!”

If both my grandfather and this inspiring winemaker are correct, then thoughts can become reality. I think that we should all challenge ourselves not only to work towards rediscovering the dreams that we may have temporarily locked away, but to begin taking active steps – even if they are small at first – towards achieving them.