149. Finding The Courage to Dream Big
Realizing Possibilities
Some people have the wherewithal in them to dream big, to think that anything can be possible, that things that they’ve never witnessed, things that they thought were out of reach, can be possible.
And some don’t.
Often, the same person will experience both at different times.
You know the impact you want to have, the desires you want to fulfill, but do you really believe you can do it? That your impact and desires are possible?
Erica and India come together to have a conversation about envisioning the impact you want to make and believing in what’s possible.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How our backgrounds influence what we can conceive of as possible
How to help yourself and others dream bigger
The feelings and fears that get in the way of claiming possibilities
What Gets In the Way of Possibility
On the Pause on the Play® Podcast, India Jackson says that when she reflects on how the energy of impostor syndrome or struggling to believe in possibilities shows up in her life, it frequently overlaps the professional and the personal.
Erica says that for her, it shows often in relationship to achievements and feelings of accomplishment or satisfaction that intersect professionally and personally.
When she adds an item to her bucket list of achievements, she says, nervousness and worry will show up and those feelings will get in the way of even dreaming big.
“Sometimes the feelings are getting in the way of you even being able to consider what you want, let alone claim it for yourself.”
India says she can often feel like she defaults to telling herself the story that what she wants will be overly complicated or overwhelming to achieve, which makes “getting to the logical smallest first step be the hardest hurdle to get over.”
Erica counters that it often goes deeper than action steps, to not being able to claim the possibility. “You can’t think about the action steps if you haven’t even decided, what do you want, what are you moving towards?”
What Influences What You Think Is Possible
But when it comes to knowing what you want, the possibilities you’re able to envision are influenced by your background and exposure to different concepts and avenues.
Those influences may leave you, “in a place of saying I don’t know [what I want] because you just don’t even know what’s out there.”
Erica adds that most people do tend to stay in the environments they grew up in.
India says that, in moving around herself, she has witnessed a number of different people in different environments who have stayed in their familiar places, and how different their perspectives on what’s possible for them are from people who have moved around and been exposed to more.
Some of those people, she continues, “continue down the path that they seemed that they were headed on, and what was possible for them, when we were kids,” and those paths were set even as early as in elementary school.
Erica says she has also had “people that I’ve known that nothing changed, not even just proximity of where they live from where they grew up, but the mindset didn’t shift.”
That mindset often limits what they can conceive of being possible or even making a conscious choice about what they want.
“It’s different to make a conscious choice that that’s what you want versus never considering the fact that you had other choices.”
Going Beyond Our Limits
Both India and Erica acknowledge the impact that less than ideal circumstances and trauma have on the ability to imagine big possibilities.
Erica says when she was growing up, “emotionally, I did not have the availability…to consider what was possible to dream bigger beyond the fact of how does this get me the hell out of here?”
As an adult, she consciously tries to hold space for possibility with her kids by asking them questions about what they want, what they enjoy, what they like. “I don’t ask because I need the answer, I ask because I want you to know that the question is worthy of being considered for you.”
She makes an effort to ask herself the same open-ended questions and poses them to the people around her and in the Pause on the Play® community too and to push people to dream beyond the expected answers.
India says what she has witnessed come from people answering those questions “sounds like freedom, freedom for that person.”
And, Erica says, that freedom can feel scary when the proverbial glass ceiling on your dreams is gone, but that “it’s necessary to remember that freedom is a huge part of dreaming bigger…because without that freedom, we can’t even conceive that it’s for us.”
India adds “No matter what…you are worthy of being free and you’re worthy of choosing what you want that freedom to look like for yourself.”
India continues with a call to action to introduce yourself to others who are different from you or introduce people in your personal or professional circles to each other.
It “makes such a big difference in being able to be expansive, being able to dream, being able to imagine your freedom.”
Ready to dive deeper?
Connecting with a community can help you expand what you believe is possible. Pause on the Play® the Community will lend you courage when you need it, in community with others who all desire to create impact from a place of equity.