What get’s you out of bed in the morning when you’re still so tired that you would rather pull the covers back over yourself? For many of us it’s the whole adulthood thing that tells us we have obligations. We have obligations to pay the rent. We have obligations to pay a plethora of bills in fact. We have obligations perhaps to see that our kids have everything we can possibly get them to help them in life. It reminds me of that bumper sticker I saw once that read “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!” a play on the classic song from the Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs movie.
While these obligations are indeed powerful forces driving us to keep putting one foot in front of another and facing another day as best we can, is it enough? Is it enough for us to make it through another day that was just like the others that preceded it and likely the same as most of the days to come?
Many of us have dreams for something more in life. We have some spark of a vision for something better. We might imagine this better day when we’re facing down another boring meeting, report or back breaking nine to five shift. We might see glimpses of it after we’ve put the kids to bed and we’re laying in our bed late at night thinking about the day to come and where we are in life. Or we might see this vision of a big beautiful dream when we’re inspired by the stories of others we see living their dreams.
My dream is now and has been the creation of a business that helps promote human kindness, caring and compassion so there can be less unnecessary suffering in this world. I’ve experienced bullying and cruelty from my childhood on through my early years as an adult and it left a big hole in my soul that was filled in by God’s love. That’s the best I can see what happened.
I’m not a very religious man but I do feel a deep spiritual connection to life and to my sense of purpose. I see the pain in the eyes of a bullied child or in the stories of people on social media. I see the struggle in the eyes and hear them in the words of people working menial difficult jobs around town, people unable to make ends meet but still working to the point of exhaustion.
So I do what I can to engage and connect with people around me in a gentle, kind and caring way and offer sincere compliments wherever possible. And doing so I’ve noticed the impact I’ve made with people. That’s why I created our Happy Cards to help others find these moments of shared appreciation and kindness in their lives. So that’s my dream for something better. I see this new Happy Cards venture growing to help children in schools, workers at the office and people in all walks of life find the good in others and in themselves more often.
I hope that everyone has an opportunity to create and follow their dreams. But it’s not really following our dreams in my experience, that’s not the best metaphor for what’s happening. When I think of my dream I feel called by it! I feel like it’s pulling me forward each day. I feel like my dream is pulling me out of bed and through each difficult challenge I encounter like some giant love powered magnet!
So I hope that whatever dream you have in your heart is so filled with love that it too reaches back to pull you forward in your life. The more you open your heart, mind and spirit to the idea that you were given a dream for a reason, that your dreams are part of who you are at your core, then I believe it will pull you forward and propel you as if it were a giant sail and you are the ship gliding on the Seas of your life.
Joseph Segal is the co-founder of Happy Cards a Los Angeles based startup creating tools to cultivate happiness in people and a happy kinder society. Learn more about our new Affirmations & Incantations for Happiness & how it can help you and those you love or work with today.