Why do we stop daydreaming?

We all had dreams when we were growing up. We wished for great things to happen in our lives. We wanted to grow up and make it happen. So why did we stop? Do you remember the good feeling it gave you and how it made you look forward to the future?

Once we grew up, we probably realised that our childhood dreams were unrealistic. We probably even got disappointed and gave up dreaming. We accepted to have just whatever the life brings. Is it really good to give up on good things happening to us in the future?

None of us can predict future, so how do we know what might happen? Future is unknown and anything can happen. Would not that be nice if it was really good? Many people came up with a smart idea and made it a success out of blue.

Dreams serve a wonderful purpose. They make us look forward to our future and help us believe that good things might happen to us. We don’t start a new venture unless we dreamt about it first. Dreaming is a way of figuring out what is it we want and possible ways how to get it. All great things start with a dream. The secret of healthy dreaming is not to rely on it and not to get upset if it doesn’t happen.

I find dreaming the cheapest way of entertainment. I instantly feel good just picturing things I would love to have and saying: “Would not that be nice?” I don’t rely on them happening but, hey, who can predict the future, anything can happen. The most important thing is that it gives me focus and drive. I don’t get disappointed if it doesn’t happen as, oh well, I can’t predict the future but nobody can ever take away the good feeling I have at the moment of dreaming.

Do you have a backup plan?

We all get attached to people that we love and care about, to our dreams and careers. Sometimes we worry about losing them so much that it takes away our happiness and current enjoyment of our lives. Our life suffers as we do not spend time thinking about how to progress and make our loved ones happy, we spend the time on what a disaster it would be if we lost them.

So how to stop worrying about losing what is important to us? We need to be able to put it to rest, wipe it out from our heads. We need learn a way how to be able to say: “Oh well, sometimes bad things do happen to us, it’s not the end of the world, I will still make it to work because I’m strong and I can take care of my life.”

A good backup plan can help us to do that. A backup plan tells us what we will do if something that we don’t like happens and then put it out of sight and forget about it. A well worked out backup plan makes us feel that we can handle anything that life throws at us that we are strong and independent and we can deal with any situation. It gives us peace of mind that we don’t have to worry about our future and we can fully concentrate on the present and make the best out of it. The better the plan the easier it is to forget about how we will handle bad situations that we can be put into.

Can we avoid failures?

 We look at failures as not achieving an expected result by a given deadline. But what if we expected an unreasonable result or the deadline was too short? What if we failed at something that is not important to us? What if we stopped trying just because we have realised that it’s not really what we want to do? Is there anything wrong with changing our mind about what we want in our life? Is it still a failure?

We might all agree that if someone succeeds at something, most of the people don’t care about their previous failed efforts or that they failed at other things not related to their success.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison 

So how do we try again something that we could not previously do and we still wish to be able to do? Maybe we could try it under different circumstances, focusing on small steps towards our goal and not to set a deadline?

There is an unlimited number of ways that we can try to do one thing; there are very high odds that one of them will work. All we need to do is to make sure that we are trying to do something that we genuinely want and keep trying different ways to get it. I started looking forward to new ventures because I know I can’t fail the big goal, I can only mess up little steps on the way. And I will keep trying as long as I breathe.

Can promises be easily kept?

We all like people to keep their promises. It gives us security that we will get what we want and we can trust them. So why don’t we always keep our promises?

Isn’t making a promise a kind of fortune telling? We are promising that we will do something in the future or we are trying to predict what will happen in the future. Unfortunately, not everything in our lives is in our control even though we would love it to be. This makes keeping promises very hard and we can fail to deliver on our promise. We loose trust. But is it really our fault or is it that we were trying to do something that is not fully in our control?

Why don’t we try to promise that we will do our best? We can say what is it that will happen if everything goes smoothly and we can also say what can happen if everything goes wrong and that the final result will be somewhere in between.

Taking this approach, we might not hurt and disappoint others. Actually, most of the time we might pleasantly surprise them because they did not have high expectations. At the end, everybody wins. We don’t have a pressure to control things that we can’t just because we promised something. And other people don’t have high expectations so they can’t get disappointed, they can only get pleasantly surprised.

Does a perfect body shape exist?

Most women wish for a perfect body. A woman with a perfect body attracts other people’s admiration and respect. We spent a lot of time and energy on dieting and exercising to achieve a perfect body shape and to avoid other people’s comments on our imperfections.

What is a perfect body shape? Who sets the standard? I think we all agree that a body shape that attracts most admiration from most peoples is the winner at that moment. But what about in the next 5 or 10 years? Based on the past, the perfect body shape changes every decade. Look at 50s and Marilyn Monroe, would her body be considered perfect now? What about Roman statues of well-rounded women or Twiggy’s slimness in the 60s. Thousand years back, the most attractive women were the ones that were most well-rounded.

So are men really attracted to the most popular body shape at the current moment or do they have each different preferences? From my own experience, I’m far from the current image of a perfect body while my partner finds me very desirable. To be honest, I've never in my life matched the perfect body image of that time and I've never had a problem with my boyfriends complaining about my body shape. Is it because I was their type rather than the popular choice?

I asked myself who is more important to find me desirable, is it my man or the public? I chose my man! I realised that it is all it counts, the public does not do anything for me, my man does! Why should I worry about the public’s opinion if they are not the ones that make me happy, care about me and love me? Since then, I decided that I will not worry about my body shape because there is a man out there that loves the way it is. 

How can we stop worrying?

The more bad experiences we’ve had, the more we worry about the future. Even seeing bad things happening to other people or seeing distress on TV makes us worry about what can happen to us and our loved ones.

We all know that life brings unexpected surprises but do we want to sacrifice our current life in fear that something bad might happen to us in the future? We all have limited time and energy. Wouldn’t that be nice if we spent this time and energy on other activities that bring joy into our lives?

The worrying itself doesn’t fix anything, it only makes us miserable. The purpose of worrying is a warning that something bad might happen. We can’t control everything and stop all bad things from happening, but we can make sure that we’ve done everything we can to prevent it from happening without sacrificing ours or our loved ones current happiness.

If that still does not help we can make an action plan. That is, what is it we will do if the event that we are worrying about does happen. We might even realise that it is not as bad as we thought and it can help us with the prevention as well.

Personally, I realised that worrying has a purpose. It warns us and tells us we need to do something. After I’ve done something I was so much happier knowing that I can influence my life and I am not fully in the hands of fate.

Is getting older a bad thing?

When we were kids, we got excited about getting older. We received more previliges the older we got such as driver’s licence. As we became adults we started forgetting the benefits of growing older and began to see the negatives that come with aging.

At this moment there’s no magic pill that would keep us young. That is a fact of life same as the sky is blue and not pink. Is it worth to be unhappy about something we can’t do anything about?

There are so many benefits that come with each age. We get smarter as we get older. We can handle more as we get older. Our jobs get easier as we get older. We get the deserved rest when we retire.

Why don’t we identify the best that our age brings and enjoy it as much as we can? Usually each age brings certain benefits that disappear once we get older. We don’t want to regret not taking the best out of each age.

Isn’t it wonderful that each age brings us different benefits and joys? It keeps our lives balanced; there is not too much or too little of anything. All we need to do is to make sure that we use the benefits of each age to the most and receive the change that comes with getting older as a new venture that brings new joys.