{"id":3972,"date":"2011-12-30T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T05:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3972"},"modified":"2011-12-30T15:44:42","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T20:44:42","slug":"do-what-you-love-and-let-the-world-support-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/do-what-you-love-and-let-the-world-support-you.html","title":{"rendered":"Do what you love, and let the world support you"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Footprints in the Sand, from the Fishgirl Folio by Katy Allgeyer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m not enthusiastic about New Year resolutions, unless they are so easy and simple to fulfill that it’s almost impossible not to carry through. We certainly do not <\/em>want to get into the habit of making promises we don’t keep – and a New Year resolution is a promise to oneself. So instead of pitching resolutions here, I want to suggest a life game, and a banner to carry into the year ahead – and every year after.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with the banner:<\/p>\n

DO WHAT YOU LOVE, AND LET THE WORLD SUPPORT YOU.<\/p>\n

Try saying the words out loud, and see how your body receives them. Is anything wriggling or squirming away from accepting that this is a rule of life that you can and will live by? Is that naysayer in your left brain rising up with a list of reasons why this approach is impractical or impossible? Is the defeatist in you – the one who carries your whole history of failures and rejections and setbacks – moaning about past disappointments, and how people and things will never change? Is the low, sad, dysthymic part of you turning, ever so slowly, on its bed of lethargy and pain to croak that there’s nothing you love enough to make you want to make an effort?<\/p>\n

Sit up and do this:<\/p>\n

1, Make a list of the things you love. Don’t edit or censor. Don’t judge yourself. So you love to eat a whole box of chocolates, or mix the perfect martini, or read romance novels. Put it on the list.<\/p>\n

2. Next, make a list of your skills, resources, and connections.<\/p>\n

3. Now see how you can marry up the two lists. Picture yourself juggling the things you love in one hand, and the skills and resources you have in the other, and feel how they could come together.<\/p>\n

Here’s how this worked for a stranger I met on a plane. I had missed my connection, and found myself jammed in a middle seat in a back row on a different itinerary from the one I had booked. And my antennae were quivering because when plans get screwed up, the Trickster comes into play and something arranges amazing “chance” encounters and riffs of coincidence.<\/p>\n

The man in the next seat was a cheerful guy I’ll call Stan. He struck up a conversation. After a while he\u00a0confessed that he was worried about retirement. He had worked for one company most of his adult life, and the company had been good to him; he was looking forward to a very decent pension in a couple of years. But he had no notion of how he’d spend his days after retiring, and was troubled because he had seen male friends die within months of stopping work, as if they had nothing left to live for.<\/p>\n

I said to him, \u201cTell me what you love to do. Tell me what you like to do for the sheer pleasure of doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thought about this for a bit. Then he said, \u201cI love the water. I used to go scuba diving. I grew up near the water, on Rhode Island, where there\u2019s a beach down the block whichever direction you take.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre those the beaches you think of when you picture yourself at the water?<\/p>\n

He told me he\u2019had relocated to North Carolina, because of his job; \u00a0there was a beach he liked down there too.<\/p>\n

What else did he love?<\/p>\n

\u201cI love \u00a0being with family, with community.\u201d He grew up in a big family, one of twelve siblings. They didn\u2019t have much but they had each other. \u201cAnd I like giving back.\u201d He explained that he and some of his brothers banded together to buy their parents a house. This guy was salt-of-the-earth.<\/p>\n

What else did he like? \u201cI like the perfect martini,\u201d he said with a naughty grin. \u201cNone of them sissy fruit drinks.\u201d<\/p>\n

I moved the discussion to Part Two. What was Stan really good at?<\/p>\n

“Cooking breakfast.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recalled that as a kid he was often the one who took charge of getting breakfast on the table for his enormous family. \u201cAnd I loved doing it. I liked the sense of looking after everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else was he good at? “I know a lot about preventing, containing and putting out fires. I’m a team player and a connector.”<\/p>\n

I moved on to Phase Three. I told Stan,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m going to say a few things to you and I want you to pretend you are listening to a description of a man you don\u2019t know. Would that be okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

He was intrigued. I span him a story about the passions and the skills of a certain man, and his need to bring the two together. As I talked, I raised and lower my cupped hands, as if i was juggling. As I raised my left hand, closer to the heart, I spoke of passions. As I raised my right hand, I talked of skills, from putting out fires to cooking breakfast.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what can you see a guy who has this combination of passions and skills doing in the second half of his life?\u201d<\/p>\n

Stan thought for a moment, then said, \u201cOwning and running a diner on the beach in North Carolina.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA diner. Really?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, an old-fashioned family diner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere you cook three hundred breakfasts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Follow the Rainbow, from the Fishgirl Folio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAt least. And where they can mix up one mean martini. Hey,\u201d Stan clapped me on the shoulder. \u201cI gotta thank you. I\u2019m feeling more juiced and mobilized than I\u2019ve felt since I started dating. I\u2019m already working out a business plan for the diner in my head, and I think I know the perfect location for it. I guess you\u2019re in the wrong seat on the wrong plane for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took a pull on his beer and asked, \u201cWhat are you going to do when you retire, Robert?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh \u2013 right \u2013 you\u2019re never going to retire because you love what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right. The great trick in life, wherever you are in the journey, is to do what you love and let the universe support it. When we do what we love, every day is a holiday.\u201d<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

The story of the chance encounter on the plane – one of many that enliven my travels – is adapted from my book Active Dreaming<\/a>: Journeying beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom<\/em>, published by New World Library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not enthusiastic about New Year resolutions, unless they are so easy and simple to fulfill that it’s almost impossible not to carry through. We certainly do not want to get into the habit of making promises we don’t keep – and a New Year resolution is a promise to oneself. So instead of pitching…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,25,34,3,26,27,8],"tags":[899,901,898,897,900,141],"class_list":["post-3972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coincidence","category-conscious-living","category-creativity","category-imagination","category-life-direction","category-self-help","category-synchronicity","tag-do-what-you-love","tag-dreamgrowing","tag-follow-your-bliss","tag-new-year-resolutions","tag-retirement-plan","tag-vision"],"yoast_head":"\nDo what you love, and let the world support you - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/do-what-you-love-and-let-the-world-support-you.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do what you love, and let the world support you - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m not enthusiastic about New Year resolutions, unless they are so easy and simple to fulfill that it’s almost impossible not to carry through. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3972"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3985,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972\/revisions\/3985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}