Sometimes You Have To Unfollow Your Old Dreams To Chase New Ones

We grow up with hopes and dreams of what we would like our lives to look like. Some change as we grow but some we stick on to, hold onto like a life raft in the ocean. We have put so much time into crafting some dreams, and have worked so hard to lay the groundwork that we may not even see that that dream may not work for us anymore, or is no longer viable. Instead of reassessing our choices, we dig in, trying to make it happen by force. Nothing good happens by force. If something isn’t happening, even after putting in countless attempts and hours into it, you may be following the wrong dream, or have limited yourself for it to only look one way. You may have already found it, but because you are hard set on it being one thing, you don’t see it and you continue to work towards something that is not meant for you. Sometimes you have to unfollow your dreams to chase new ones.

In our lives we’re constantly growing, or we should be, challenging ourselves, doing new things with new people, we’re getting new information, educating ourselves, so it is completely rational that our dreams change over time, as we do. There are definitely big picture dreams that we work to attain, but even those can change as we settle into who we are and what is best for us today. The trick is to recognize those things and not get stuck in the dreams of our past.

Before stepping on this path I thought that things had to look a certain way or I couldn’t be happy. And, with that mindset, I wouldn’t have been happy if they looked any different than how I had imagined them. But those ideas were based on when I was young, and I had an idealized view of what life should look like, or what I wanted it to, so why did I think that those same dreams still hold up today? I had to be open to new things, to new experiences, to letting go of old ideas and dreams so I could be open to what else was out there. I’ve lived a lot of life from when I set those dreams many years ago, and my ideas were fabricated with very limited information compared to what I have now. So why would I want to limit my dreams by using old information?

Well, for one, at the beginning of this journey, I was still scared to let go. I felt that I had to control everything, or at least try, and if I didn’t everything would just fall apart. I had to recognize that everything had fallen apart with me hanging on, so, perhaps that thinking and action wasn’t working in my best interest. It was hard to release the past, to be OK with being open to what is and what could be. I felt like I was floating in an abyss. But while I let myself float, new dreams emerged. I discovered things I had never let myself be open to before, and consequently I learned new things, and that opened up my vision of what my dreams were for myself.

My dreams today have changed, although there are some that have still stayed with me, but I have let go of the parameters I had once set on them, and let them be as they are meant to be, allowing them to look the way they are supposed to, not with some naive childlike rigid guidelines that I used to place on them. Check-in with your dreams, and yourself, and see if those dreams you’ve held on to are actually holding you back. See if you need to unfollow some of your dreams to chase new ones, because you have outgrown them. Let yourself dream in the now, not the way you thought it was supposed to be. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you think you’ve held on to old dreams that no longer serve you, or are no longer valid? Which dreams fall into this category? Why do you think you’ve held on to them? Do you feel that you should let them go? If yes, why? If no, why? Do you think that if you are able to let go of some of your old dreams you might find new ones that are better for you today? Do you place expectations on them to only look a certain way? Do you see how that can get in your way? What if you let go SLAYER, and trusted you are being guided to where you’re supposed to be, what if you were open to new things, do you see how maybe you might receive a set of new dreams, dreams that are more fitting with who you are today? I challenge you SLAYER, to write down your dreams, and make sure that they represent who you are today, if they don’t, unfollow them, and make room for some updated dreams that you can chase, and perhaps, just might make you forget those old dreams altogether.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you