You Will Always Have the Capacity to Dream a Little Bigger
One of my coaches did a thing I really liked on a call earlier in the year. He had those of us on the call breathe in deeply, and then ‘take another sip’: another little breath.
It turns out that when we take a deep breath in, we almost never breathe in all the way.
We think we have, but we haven’t.
There’s always space for a little more.
Try it now: deep breath… and then it turns out you have space for a little more.
I led a group through a similar exercise earlier this week.
I invited them to breathe in… and then breathe in a little more.
Later in the call, as I had planned, I invited them to dream.
To dream how life might be in a year’s time.
And then I asked them – as I have done for many years with my clients – to dream a little bigger.
And they could.
It turned out that, like with the capacity in our lungs, there is always the capacity for a little more dreaming.
And it’s not just dreaming.
We may think after running six 8km laps that we have nothing left. But if we’re brave enough, maybe we do.
It may feel, when writing an article we plan to share, that this is the extent of our abilities. The scariest thing we could write about.
And then we find out, when we try to be even braver that… there’s space for a little more.
We almost always have the capacity for a little more.
In our lungs, in our lives.
In the 21st century’s unforgiving workplace, we need to be a little careful with this.
Some of our resources need renewing: our energy, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Continually asking ourselves to push a little more, a little more, a little more… well, we weren’t built for that.
But some of our resources are endless: by using more, they grow more.
With each act of courage, we extend our zone of comfort. And suddenly, something which required courage before doesn’t need as much courage. And we can act again, stretching ourselves further.
With each act of love, we might find that, actually, by extending our love for the person in front of us when it feels almost impossible to do so, we find more capacity for love underneath… in the moment, and afterwards.
And with each act of dreaming, we may find that by daring to dream just a little bigger, our imagination can stretch even further.
I once heard someone say that the interesting thing about our breath is that it is the only one of our internal processes that is mostly run by our unconscious mind, but can be affected by our conscious mind, too. We can’t, for example, suddenly stop our liver working, or speed up digestion.
We can, though, slow, speed up, deepen or make shallower our breathing.
It lies on the border between unconscious and conscious.
If we’re not careful, our unconscious might run our courage, our love, or our dreaming.
And whilst it might be wise to save a tiny bit of lung capacity in case we need it in an emergency, there’s really no need to hold back some love for an emergency – it might be wise to share it now.
It might be wise to use that bit more courage, now.
It might be wise to dream a little bigger… now.
To take another little sip of dream.
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PS My latest book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World, is out now. Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose
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.