Dream Out Loud!

If I could change one thing in my past, I know where I would begin. Living the rational life of a senior executive, I not only forgot how to dream — I forgot all my dreams, even the ones from childhood. If you think I am exaggerating and that this cannot happen, you are a lucky person. It can, and very easily. At some point — bang! — the rascal inside you dies (or is it only me?). And that is that. You are no longer Tom Sawyer or Peter Pan.

So let me tell you, with the benefit of experience: dreaming is a vitally important skill.

It is said that only human beings can dream. A dream is born of particular properties of consciousness, and one of them is reflection: the ability to see yourself from the outside, to step beyond the frame, to lift the limits.

Dreaming is a skill, which means it grows blunt without practice. That is exactly what happened to me. Focusing too hard on measurable goals, indicators and achievements, I lost an important part of a full life, and my bearings for the future. It took the proverbial midlife crisis for me to realise what I had lost and to begin recovering the skill.

Dreaming matters, and here is why.

1. Your dreams are sketches of future goals: a starting point and a guiding star. When we dream, we are not bound by outside constraints such as money or circumstance. The only limits are ourselves and the boldness of our thinking.
2. Dreams are a source of motivation. They lift the spirits and sustain our faith in the future.
3. The more you dream, the bolder your dreams become. The brain brings its whole arsenal into play — creative thinking, accumulated knowledge, experience — and the richer these ingredients, the brighter and bolder your ideas. Steve Jobs said, ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’, and that is precisely about dreams and the thirst to move forward. Goals are often a compromise with life. A dream need not be.

Dreams help. Today, whenever I start a new project, I ask myself what its results would look like in my wildest dreams. And, between ourselves, every morning — over a cup of coffee or on the way to work, alone with my thoughts — I allow myself to dream a little…

So — dream!