Nurture Your Dream

If Simon Squibb were to walk up to you in the street and ask "What's your dream?" – what would you say?

Would you know how to tell him about your dream, in one clear sentence?

For any one person who can, there are dozens who would struggle. If this is you, you are not alone.

I don't know how to imagine my own future.

And then:

“the future is not as dark and unknowable as it often seems”

and:

“the closed loop I'm trapped in”

Perhaps things need to be imagined before they can be defined and named.

perhaps things don’t have to be defined before they can be imagined; perhaps sometimes we have to imagine them first, in some as-yet-undefined form, and then discover what they are enough to give them a name.

And I wonder if that changes the question from “What do I want my future to look like?” to something more like “What can I allow myself to imagine, before I know what it means?”

There’s something rather hopeful in that. It gives the not-yet-defined a bit more room to breathe.

Okay, here's a recent message in my DMs - from someone who's been reading my Dance of Lead+Follow Letters, and coming to Draw with Margarita and Tea with Margarita.

I felt like it brought an opportunity - but I have no idea how to embrace it.

"This message will likely be somewhat abstract - it is filled with me thoughts and new ideas. Mostly I am sharing this with you because of you ask in the Tea group about what folks may feel about your writing. From you ask i went back to remind myself of some of the earlier letters and was super pleased to rediscover a few thoughts that bounce around in my head - in rather abstract ways, but clear enough that I wonder where the thread started so I can go back and revisit...

Anyway - The following pondering meandered though my mind and as it is partly your words that are helping unlock the door I thought you might appreciate it - I wrote it in a Neurodivergent community chat I am part of... I think your way of thinking will appreciate and enjoy the larger thought process...

I have been pondering an ongoing quest of mine to : form my own future. I have lived my life reacting to circumstances from the outside in a multitude and depth of layers, means, and attributes.

Anyway this morning I noticed this train of thought that was a very new consideration.

I am often confronted with being asked what I “want” what I want the future to look like. If it could be anything what would it be - realistic or not.

I always struggle with the idea of imagining a future beyond the struggles of the exact moment I am in. So this pondering caught me off guard…

As I was taking care of clearing breakfast and brushing my teeth (yes, these sort of activities often overlap : ) I found myself in this conversation.

How can I dream of a future I can’t imagine. How can I define what I can’t imagine
This thought shifted into this dialogue:

speaker 1 (the side of why it makes sense I struggle imagining “future” when I don’t think in terms of the future there is just Now): I can only imagine a fairy because I know what a fairy is - if i didn’t know what a fairy was how could I imagine one?

speaker 2 (the rebuttal): So without the name, in this case “fairy”, you can’t image a winged being with some variety of magical abilities?

speaker 3: Perhaps things are not defined and then imagined - perhaps things need to be imagined so they can be defined and only then named…

A stepping stone on the way to somewhere - i don’t claim this is some great epiphany or some great set of doors swung open in the walls that hold me where I feel stuck, thus allowing me access to some new world or way of seeing “future”. But the seeds of possibility and a degree of hope - perhaps the future is not as dark and unknowable as it often seems. Maybe the closed loop I’m trapped in of not being able to define my “dream” of what I want (realistic or not - a dream) does not depend on how I have been taught I need to define the “future”. All the Shoulds all the “rules” and the predefined ideas. maybe this loop can be seen in reverse. Maybe (just maybe) I dream the abstract and then I define it…

Knowing what you want is supposed to be easy.

Everybody knows what they want, right?

I didn't.
I didn't for the longest time.
And worse, I didn't know how to find out.

So I began to collect ways.

I got better at it.

(If you want a book recommendation, check out The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz.)

Then, when I began working with psychology, I discovered that I was not alone.

These days, every day I invite folks to tell me about what they want.

Nine times out of ten, when they begin to describe it... they find they don't know it as well as they thought.

Before your dream can speak

Before your dream has clothed itself in words and details, it may live as a gossamer shimmer at the back of your mind.

If you're at this stage, when you try to describe it... words won't come. Or they'll get too confused to make sense.

That doesn't mean your dream is broken or gone away.

It means: your dream needs nurturing – like a young fledgling chick before it can learn to fly.

To nurture a dream

What your hazy musings need to grow up into a fully-fledged dream is the chance to mull and wonder.

People can be too-quick to dismiss something when it can't (yet) speak for itself.

It's also too easy to dismiss your own dream-to-be.

It can seem indulgent to bask in its glow, while it can't give a full account of itself.

And yet...

And yet its heartbeat is alive.

It needs you to give it somewhere safe to grow.

A nest for your dream

How do you nurture a dream when it's too young to play with words?

You return to what you knew how to do before you learnt to speak: to see, to hear, to move.

I've come to rely on NeuroGraphica to help me give these early, wordless intimations somewhere to gather and coalesce.

And, gradually, something that was only a shimmer can begin to take shape.

"I was curious: How could drawing lines help me think?

"The surprise was: you can draw about something — almost as if you're writing about it, but without words getting in the way."

~ Tsveta Dimova (film producer and director)

What is NeuroGraphica?

NeuroGraphica® is a tool for non-verbal thinking.

It uses simple lines and shapes to help you think where words can't yet reach.

No artistic ability required.
No drawing experience needed.

Just paper.
A marker.
A dollop of curiosity.

Thinking on the page – without words getting in the way.

Give your dream room to emerge

Over three 2-hour sessions, you'll use NeuroGraphica to give your dream space to emerge, take shape and gather momentum.

A tool you get to keep

NeuroGraphica isn't something you use once and put away.

Once you've learnt the basic process, you can return to it whenever there's something you want to explore — especially when the words aren't quite there yet.

You can draw about a question, a decision, or a dream that is still only beginning to reveal itself.

The drawings you make during these sessions are yours to keep, too.

And perhaps, next time something begins as a little gossamer shimmer at the back of your mind, you'll know what to do.

Make it a nest.
Give it some room.
See what wants to emerge.

"Months later, I still reach for this when I need it."