If you don't act on a dream, it stays a dream.

When running the Meaningful Productivity Workshops last month, I was caught slightly off guard as Resistance reared its head for the attendees.

When we talked about managing our attention (not our time), the things people were getting distracted from were the big things.

The businesses not started.

The writing not done.

The things that really matter.

But I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve been working with people’s Resistance for years.

But it still did. Somehow I hadn’t seen the connection between the ways the Attention Economy steals our lives and the things we avoid because of our inner fear.

These things are everywhere.

I was struck by the beauty of it as I spoke to client a few weeks ago, and found myself saying, ‘If you don’t act on a dream, it stays a dream.’

Of course mostly hearing this message might be motivation: I want my dream to be a reality, so I need to act on it.

But I was holding the other side in that moment, too: the beauty of what our Resistance is trying to preserve.

If I don’t act on my dream, I get to keep my dream as a dream.

With all its dream-like perfection.

The hazy, beautiful, magical dream.

I had a lot of love, in that moment, for the part of us that wants to keep our dreams as dreams.

The cuddly safeness of them.

The mysterious vagueness of them.

The glorious, dream-like perfection.

Not all dreams echo reality: some dreams are just dreams.

But others are whispers of what could be.

Hints that there is a future that is different.

Signs or guides to what we might create, or who we might become.

It feels seductive and seems safer to keep our dream as it is, precious, unattained and unsullied by the messiness and grubbiness of the world.

Preserved forever in its imaginary perfection.

But… I’m still the man who wrote the 12-Minute Method books.

And I don’t quite believe in that imaginary perfection.

We’re allowed to dream. And to leave dreams as dreams.

But if the dream is a whisper, a call to adventure, then the whisper is likely to keep coming, and coming, and coming… until it’s so loud it’s not a whisper any more.

And then louder, and louder and louder until we can’t ignore it.

And so while we might be seduced by the idea of keeping our dream as a dream.

Maybe we owe it to whoever or whatever is whispering to us through our dream to see if we can birth that dream into the world.

To give it life through our courageous action.

And to see what happens.

So you can keep your dream safe as a dream.

Or you can free it, so it can live its life, and others can see it too.

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PS My new book, The Power to Choose, is coming soon! Subscribe to this blog to be among the first to hear more.

This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.