But if you lived in a world where nearly everything was on the menu, what would you order? Could you even believe this is possible? And what could be the consequences of such belief? What would you then choose? How would you go about ordering?
What kind of restaurant do you dine in now? Do they serve haute cuisine? Or is it a cafeteria? Or is it one of those Soviet restaurants where the knife is chained to the table and you have to ask what they have, because even though there are two hundred items on the menu (with their weight in grams next to each one), they only have the pork?
What kind of restaurant would you like to dine in? Would you like to dine in Restaurant la Vie? I think we’d all like to eat in a better restaurant. And in Restaurant la Vie, the menu is yours to create. The menu is created by dreaming.
Broken illusions and forgotten dreams
What do I mean by dreaming? In its simplest form, dreaming is thinking about things. Or thinking about future possibilities. About different scenarios for you and your life. What are your recurrent thoughts? As you do your morning run, work in the garden or sit alone there at your kitchen table with a cup of coffee, what thoughts keep coming back to you? What images? What ideas? What are the things you keep telling yourself you’d do if you had more time or more money or both? What are you longing for? What is missing from your life? Or, if you’re one of the lucky few for whom everything seems just right, then what could enable you to have even more fun than you’re having right now?
But what if you are one of those who simply does not dream? If you are one of those highly left-brain, pragmatic rationalists, who will not indulge in such impracticality? Certainly as we grow older, many of us stop dreaming at one point or another. But we all have dreamed before. When we were kids, for sure. Before we get deeper into dreaming, it’s important to consider the possibility of what limits our dreams, or even keeps us from dreaming altogether.
Everybody has heard of a mid-life crisis, which I personally prefer to term a mid-life transition. All people go through it, some more consciously than others. And while at it, many also experience disillusionment. It usually happens around the age of 40, but it can also happen much earlier. Whatever the age (but usually as the second half of one’s life is starting), all of us have to make peace with the fact that some of our childhood dreams will never be fulfilled.
In my seminars, I have seen over and over again that many people toss the entire concept of dreaming out the window. They hunker down like an ox and start pulling the plow. Sometimes I joke that the Estonian constitution has a paragraph in it that says that after age 20 you can dream half as much and then after 40 you cannot dream at all.
In dreaming there is a lot of hidden unconscious negativity. A lot of dreams don’t happen for a lot of people, so they don’t bother to dream. A dream not coming true brings disappointment. How many times can you endure this? It’s like reliving our teenage years of unrequited love. You want the girl (or boy), you dream about her, you visualize walking hand in hand with her, and you finally (maybe) work up the courage to talk to her, and you realize she does not entertain even remotely the same idea. In fact, she doesn’t even know your name. How many times can we go through this process of love and agony?
In my late teens, early twenties, I went through a much more elaborate process of trying to transcend from friendship to intimacy with three different young women (not all at the same time). Each of those relationships lasted a few years. Had I let the disappointments get the better part of me, I might as well have ended up as a monk. You see, in the end, many of us protect ourselves by not dreaming. We don’t fly too high. We don’t have silly thoughts. We fly low to the ground. And we build up a life.
Even if you gave up dreaming long ago, pretend for at least as long as you’re reading this book that you didn’t give it up. Just have fun and play along. Hide the book under your mattress if you want. Nobody but you needs to know.
How round is your Wheel of Life?
What if it’s been so long you don’t even know what to dream about?
For the two categories of people who don’t dream – those beaten down by years of being denied their dreams, and those so super-successful that there’s nothing left to want – let me introduce an exercise that can help. I call it the Wheel of Life. It’s a wheel, because it is supposed to be round – it’s supposed to roll smoothly when our life is well balanced. But most of us won’t have wheels of life that are neatly round. So when you get (as you probably often do) into the fast lane of life, the unbalanced wheel gives you a real bumpy ride. Also, beware that a major deficit in any one area of life can and will eventually break the whole wheel.
Imagine four axes. Self to the north and Material side of life to the south. East is Relationships with others and west is Work life.
I’m going to ask you to rate your subjective levels of satisfaction on a one to ten scale for each of these areas. When giving yourself a score, consider the state of affairs in each area of your life. How satisfied or happy are you?
Self means your physical health, your fitness, your mind, your hobbies and time just for yourself. It also means your relationship with yourself. On a deeper level, it relates to your emotions, subconscious thoughts, your self-concept. Going even deeper it has to do with the spiritual side of life, your soul, your light. So ask yourself – how satisfied am I with myself, on a scale of one to ten? And do not give yourself an easy eight, nine or ten – be honest, rather conservative and quite demanding. In order to help you pick a score, here are some questions:
Are you healthy all the time? Or are you often sick? Are you in the best shape of your life? Or are you a slug or a couch potato? Is your mind quick and agile? Or does it feel foggy, and you find it difficult to concentrate? Do you have some hobbies or ways to spend your leisure time you find fulfilling? Or do you spend hours watching bad reality television or staring at the computer screen – regardless of whether you read Facebook entries of semistrangers, watch YouTube videos, or play computer games? How much do you like yourself, really? How high is your self-esteem?
The Material side of life can make life much less stressful and can also make you worry. Do you have no financial worries whatsoever? Or can you hardly make both ends meet? Do you make enough, compared to the standard you set for yourself? At the end of the year, after all the necessary and sinful expenses, is there much left? How about your investments? Are they profitable? Or have you not even made or thought about investments? Do you have too many unnecessary things? Or do you have no things at all? Do you give generously? Or do you think only of yourself?
How far are you from your ideal in that area of life – The Material side of life, as we labeled it?
Relationships with others means the presence or absence of your human relationships and the quality of the existing ones. Is there a significant other in your life? How are things with your spouse? Do you laugh together a lot? Do you argue too much? How about your children? If you have kids, are you friends with them? Or do you find it often too difficult to relate to them? Or if you have no kids, do you wish you did? How are your relations with your parents? Or friends? Do you see or talk to them often enough? Or are you already beginning to forget their faces? How satisfied are you with your relationships on a scale from one to ten?
Work life means your job, vocation or business. Is what you’re doing now really for you, your true calling? Or are you just marking time and picking up a paycheck? How good are you at what you do? Do you achieve most of your work goals? Half of them? None? Do you like the team you work with, or do most of your colleagues irritate you?
Imagine that ten is ideal
