Change starts with a dream

Change starts with a dream, a fantasy of what the future could look like. We have to imagine the possibilities and try the alternative realities on for size. What if such-and-such a scenario came about? How would it make me feel? What would the implications be for other parts of my life? Are there behaviours or addictions that I would have to give up?

It is only by imagining what our life or work or relationships could be like that we are able to gauge their desirability. This is important because it is the emotional “high” we expect to get – the feeling of satisfaction or pleasure – that will trigger the necessary desire to make things happen. If we imagine a future that feels good, that mini emotional treat gives us the incentive to repeatedly focus on that possible reality, thereby sustaining our intent and fuelling our desire to act.

The more vividly we can envisage the future we want to create, the more likely our dream will catalyse positive emotions and the more likely we will be to go about creating that reality – through intention and action. Of course, the future we imagine and the one we experience may not always match up, even if they are similar on the surface.

I can’t now remember when I first had the idea to do a PhD, but it was many, many years before I actually took action. And the dream was at least partially conceived in ignorance. My desire was fuelled by what I imagined a PhD would be – what it would do for me, how it would make me feel – such as the prestige it would bring, the sense of achievement and the thrill of discovering new knowledge. Those projected feelings sustained my intent for 10 years or so, until I finally made the choice to actually do the PhD. In the meantime, I had taken numerous interim steps, like doing my Masters, all with the intention of realising my original dream.

And how did it turn out? Well, I certainly experienced some of those anticipated emotional highs, but there were also terrible lows that I hadn’t foreseen – the boredom, the frustration, the loss of faith. And there were positives I hadn’t imagined too – the “ah-ha” moment when I was exposed to the philosophy of research, especially the importance of ontology, epistemology and methodology and their alignment. This made me realise that all knowledge is based on our underlying assumptions about reality and how we think we know what we know.

So the manifest reality didn’t precisely match the imagined experience, but the original dream, together with its anticipated emotional rewards, was necessary in order to create the reality (through sustained intent and incremental action).

Now, as I set about creating my future as a writer, I need to go through the same process again – imagination, desire, intent and action. And to do this repeatedly, until my dream turns into reality (albeit a different reality to the one I projected).