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Stuck: 3 Reasons You’re Not Living the Dream

Dreams can be all consuming. Some days the dream journey can be frustrating. When you feel stuck you are likely to find yourself in one of two camps.
Either you:
1) feel stuck because you don’t know how to implement your dream and/or have a hard time setting goals
-OR-
2) you feel stuck but you don’t know why and don’t think you should be
This article is for those who fall in camp 2 … (note: if you fall into category 1 here are some tips: power of goals, goal setting and make your dream a reality).
Being stuck, and not really having ANY idea why, can be a gut wrenching experience!
This is especially true when you believe you have done all you can to claim your dream. I know – I have been there.
Below are three reasons, I uncovered, as to why I wasn’t living the dream and what to do about it.
1. It’s Hard to Separate Yourself from Your Dream’s Outcome: You have spent time dreaming and FINALLY have nailed down EXACTLY what you want to do. Then you find yourself stuck in quicksand when you begin to objectively look at your dream and what others need. This is the step where you take your dream and line it up with what the world needs – while staying true to who you are (see #3). This is also the step where feedback is critical. Yet in order to receive feedback with minimal pain and/or frustration you need to shift your mind to think about WHO you’re helping more so that how these people “should” receive your message. You can’t control other people. Also stating that no one gets you and that no one believes in you can be a cop-out for the truth – it was for me. The truth is you may need to tweak your dream to make it fit with what others need. Once your dream is ready to be released to the world – it stops being yours.
2. You Become Inward Focused Trying to Fix You: You are a hard charger – as an old friend liked to call it. You are driven, a real go-getter and you’re going to to figure this out and fix this! So what do you do? You turn the problem solving tiger – on yourself. And you get stuck in an internal do loop reviewing everything that you’ve done wrong. This is counter productive because what you’re doing is tearing yourself down. Step back and look outside. Look externally – talk to people you trust to see how you can better align your dream to what others need. You often get caught in #2 because of #1.
3. Your Dream Becomes Your Identity: You have poured so much of your blood, sweat and tears into this dream that you can’t let the dream go. You have fallen in love with your own dream and don’t care what anyone thinks. If you don’t do EXACTLY what you’ve set out to do you are a failure. This is a lie – that is shame talking – telling you that if you fail YOU are a failure. The truth is that you are the source of your dreams not the other way around.
Why are you stuck? What’s holding you back from living the dream?
Copyright 2015, Mary R Miller