My cousin introduced me to the Emergence podcast series by Derek Rydall. This guy is a wealth of wonderful inspiration. The first episode I listened to was “The Difference Between Dreamers and Achievers”. It was a gloriously terrifying episode that immediately captured my attention. I say terrifying because the episode is centered around being open to the changes that must occur in a person and/or their life in order for our dreams to come true. He talks about how it is impossible for the person who sets the intention for a dream or vision to be the same person who accomplishes it in the end. After all, if we keep going through the same motions -the same routines- our lives will not change. Our dreams, our visions, our intentions will not come true. Some part of us and/or our lives must change. And this change can be minor, or very major depending on the size of the dream.
To illustrate this, he tells a hypothetical story about an acorn that has a consciousness and a desire to become an oak tree. Once the acorn has set that intention and made that choice, it would then have to crack its own shell, essentially destroying itself to become something bigger. If this consciousness existed, the acorn would realize that its identity was being shattered and it would most likely start to fight to keep itself intact – doing whatever it needed to do to “survive”. If the acorn was in fact able to keep it’s shell together, it would probably see that survival as a success. But in reality, is it? That acorn had the same potential to emerge as a strong tree, as much as the other acorns. But that fear of change – of opening itself up and letting go – kept it from fulfilling its destiny.
And really. Isn’t that what we as human beings do so much of the time? We have these hopes and dreams, but in order to achieve them we have to change. That change could be the challenge to learn something new, or possibly to uproot our lives to move to a new area, or risk our savings in order to invest in a new venture. And what is the biggest hindrance to change? Fear. This leads me into the next podcast I coincidentally chose to listen to titled “Just Make It! The Secret to getting more Done in less Time.”
In this episode, he talks about how if there’s something that we want to do, we have to stop making excuses and just do it. Perhaps the excuses stem from fear of the actual change (as in the examples above), or maybe we are holding ourselves back because we are waiting for everything to be perfect. But let’s be real. When will everything ever be perfect? Unless we throw ourselves into our goals, will we ever know what we will truly need? I don’t know about you, but I learn by doing. It isn’t until I’m performing the action that I can then really know what my obstacles will be and then I can go about trying to figure out how to solve them. And don’t forget… obstacles are not bad things. They are opportunities to learn and grow and keep advancing ourselves so that we can keep reaching the next level.
If you are looking for inspiration, I highly recommend Derek Rydall’s podcasts. I’m sure as I listen and become inspired, I will continue to write about them. Get out there and start living your dreams!
