I can’t imagine a world without dreams or dreamers. As a student, Albert Einstein was such a dreamer that his teachers didn’t think he had much potential. Within a decade, he published his Theory of Relativity. Dreamers think in terms of images and many times in color. Dreamers also allow their minds to take them to far away places doing what seem to be strange and different things. When Napoleon Hill stated that “what the mind of man can conceive and believe, he can achieve”, he was referring to dreamers. We are all dreamers to some degree. This is especially true when we are children. Unfortunately, so many of us lose our ability to dream and imagine as we become older.
The more detail that we dream or imagine the more real our dream seems to be. I have had several vivid dreams that when after I awoke, I still remembered incredible detail. In my case, these dreams were usually in some far away place, as if on a journey. I dreamed of places that I had not yet visited, and some that I had visited before. My most recent dream of this type was that I was on a trip to Cuba and that I met Fidel Castro. We were engaged in conversation and I took the opportunity to ask him if he could use his influence to help me get hired by the CNN International office in Havana. My dream stopped after I asked for his help and I haven’t had any offers from CNN yet.
I am a dreamer and some say that I am too full of illusions and dreams. I’m sometimes told that I am naïve and sometimes that my world isn’t real. I am told that I wear rose-colored glasses (I do). I have been told that reality is outside of me and not inside and that the world is serious business and that there is little room for dreamers. I don’t believe it!
When we dream and hope for a better existence for ourselves and others, we are using our imagination for a good purpose. The next step is to become actively involved in making our dream a reality. Those who become active users and seekers of their imagination and partake in life begin to create their own reality. It is through intentionally imagining that same dream over and over when we begin to see people, events, and circumstances appear in our lives that begin to mirror our dream. I have seen this occur many times in my life.
You have heard of the term “self-fulfilling prophecy”. When someone uses this term, they are referring to whatever you believe long enough and with enough emotion, will eventually happen to you. I have been reading Bernie Siegel’s bestseller, “Love Medicine, and Miracles” which was published in 1986. He describes documented cases of the placebo effect where patients healed themselves believing they were taking a prescription that would heal them. It was their own energy that actually healed them. Their minds healed their bodies.
Siegel isn’t saying that traditional medicine should be replaced by faith healing or by willing disease away. But what he is saying that there is enough evidence which shows that in some cases, people heal their bodies by their attitudes, how they concentrate and where they focus their energy.
I have been keeping a journal since 1997. I have written the details of my dreams, recorded other people’s words, and I have transcribed paragraphs, sections, and whole pages of books that I was reading at the time. I even have some of the most memorable ones tabbed and labeled so it would be easier for me to revisit those ideas again. When I read these passages or meaningful captions, they have a different or greater meaning for me because I am not the same person reading them again who originally recorded them.
I propose that if you haven’t started a journal, begin one today. Buy an inexpensive composition book and just put words on paper. It will be somewhat awkward if you haven’t been practicing lately, but soon it will feel natural to you.
We will revisit journals in greater detail at some time in the future. Remember that your words are your images on paper. They are the pictures in your mind.