The Importance of Dreaming in Creating Quality of Life

Why Dream?

Part of the human experience is growing towards achievement. Producing and being a part of something larger than oneself, that creates a sense of fulfillment and purpose. Unfortunately we often forgo this need to satisfy our more basic survival musts. Companies squash creativity, overwork people and quality of life diminishes. We are told that this is normal, that it is necessary, that it is exactly what we should expect. To be frank, this is not true. There are a multitude of ways that we can be fulfilled and live with direction and purpose. There are multitudes of ways that we can explore our own creativity. 

Even if we must stay at a job for its financial stability there is no reason why we can’t pursue a direction and purpose outside of those hours. There is also no reason why we can’t have quality time with family if we desire it, granted it helps if they do to. There is also no reason why we can’t pursue things we enjoy just for the experience of it; not to mention there is no reason why we can’t have it all as long as the dreams resonate with our truth. What I mean by this is that the dream comes from yourself rather than what society says you should have or do.  Dreaming allows us to see the bigger picture; it allows us to connect to the things that really matter and that create joy and fulfillment in life. Dreaming also helps us to problem solve, stretch our perspective and look at things from all angles.

Re-claiming the Right to Dream

There are many beliefs surrounding dreams that keep us from having them. From believing they are a waste of time, to believing only a few can achieve them, we end up telling ourselves not to bother. Part of lacking vision in life is that we took the permission to dream away from ourselves.  The beginning of improving our quality of life and achieving fulfillment is giving ourselves this permission back. It is only ours to give. Here are a few questions to ask to allow you to move forward and dream:

• What are the cultural views of dreams, dreaming, pursuing ones dreams?
• What are your beliefs about dreams, dreaming and pursuing your dreams?
• Looking back in your life, what do you see when you look at the times you could have dreamed, or you did dream. What were your behaviours, what did you do, what were the choices you made?
• What is the pattern you find when you look at all the times in your life you were faced with dreams, and pursuing them?
• What were the emotions and physical sensations you felt through these times?
• What were the thoughts going through your mind as you played out these behaviours and patterns?
• Where did you learn these beliefs and behaviours?
• As a child how did your parents react to dreaming? As you grew how did peers, role models and adults react to dreams?

Once you clear out the nonsense about dreaming you can begin to play with the canvas again. In the beginning dreaming can just be playful and fun. There is no reason to own any of your dreams at first. Eventually you will stumble upon a few that seem to stick and resonate. 

Creating and Owning your Dreams

Eventually a direction and purpose will make itself known in the form of a dream and or vision that won’t go away. It is a vision that stays long term that creeps in every time you take a breath, or every time you stop and wonder what you want to do. It is something that gives you a thrill and perhaps even scares you. The hard part about this stage of dreaming is we don’t own the vision. We wonder what is practical; we wonder what we should do and how we should do it. We spin and go around and around all the while the vision is always there. "I really wish I could (Insert Dream Here,) but I don’t know what I want to do." Until we own the vision and realize that it is what we want to do, we will never be able to start walking towards it. When creating change you first need to be aware that the current situation, thing etc. is no longer working. Then you need something to move towards or you will find yourself running in circles away from but always around the outdated thing you are trying to change. 

Once a dream is owned and we allow ourselves to admit that “yes, ok this is what I want,” then we can build the vision in detail. What the vision will feel like and look like; how it will create a ripple effect that is beneficial to ourselves, those around us and onwards. The more detail and depth we give the vision the clearer in our minds it will be. It can be easy to get lost in how it will come about; this is a pitfall we need to be aware of. If we envision one way that the dream will come about we lose the ability to see all the other potential ways. When a door opens we may miss it completely because we were staring at a different closed door. It is better to hold the vision of what we want but allow the path we take to get there to be open and unlimited. You never know what opportunities will present themselves and the innumerable ways of achieving a goal. If A. doesn’t work then there is always B. through infinity.

The Physical Steps to Create Reality

Once we create the vision, from a dream that we finally owned, we now begin the road of creating it in physical reality. This means taking small steps everyday to create momentum and motivation. There are so many pitfalls in this stage. So many beliefs around success and problem solving, life and the world that get in the way. Clarity and honesty along with self-examination and understanding/care will become the building blocks of this stage. Finding people that are safe to share with, that inspire and motivate and believe in you will also become very important. Stay away from dream killers; you know who they are in your life. In this stage it will become necessary to trust not just your head, but your emotions as well. We are emotionally driven beings and each emotion has vast amounts of information. They are also how a lot of us access our intuitive understanding. If we get an odd feeling about a certain opportunity it might mean we should take a step back and examine it because we are feeling something is wrong. Or if we feel afraid of something but at the same time excited it could just mean that it is a risky move and yet something that we feel called to do.

Speaking of fear it can also cloud our judgment. If there is real fear because something doesn’t feel right then that is one thing, but too often we can feel afraid of taking a risk and stop rather than following our hearts. We can also feel paralyzed if we get caught in how to create the entire vision all at once. How can we possibly foresee every step we need to take before the ultimate achievement of our vision; that is overwhelming.  It is better to take it one step at a time while utilizing the final vision to create our choices. Learning all of these things will help you in walking your path. 

Get Out There and Start Dreaming

Understanding and learning the art of change is a necessary part of our existence. When we master the art of change and utilize it while pursuing our dreams we become unstoppable. Each time we practice the above stages of dreaming, creating a vision and then making that vision a reality we get better at it. It can be hard to admit that none of us really know what we are doing. We hopefully know our values and ourselves, hold onto our visions then throw a stone and see where it lands. This is a part of the fear and the thrill of life. The Canvas is yours to paint, it is time you stop hiding the paint from yourself. Good luck Creating.

Charlotte Brammer

Living Clarity

http://www.livingclarity.ca

Creating Chemistry With Life

Emotional Intelligence, How It Can Help You Improve Your Life

Frustrations throughout the day

Do you ever find yourself frustrated for long periods of time? Where you find yourself being irritable with loved ones, or when things are taking to long? Where you feel a sense of time slipping by and as it progresses you get more and more frustrated and angry? Frustration can be a sign of violating your own needs and boundaries. Of course we have all felt frustration when we are trying to do a particular task and it refuses to co-operate. Frustration over doing something that doesn’t work lets us know we need to try it a different way or come from a different angle. This isn’t the same as frustration over agreeing to do something when we really need or want to do something else, or when we procrastinate ourselves. It is when we go against our sense of what is right for ourselves and cater to others, or cater to our idea’s of sensible rather then our dreams and passion that we feel that very real and pervasive sense of anger. When we are able to be honest with ourselves and begin to say yes to our needs and desires then we will be free to relax and enjoy the rest of our moments. Our frustration in a way becomes our guide to let us know we aren’t being honest with ourselves. This experience of frustration is emotional information.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

This utilizing emotional information to understand our internal and external moment is what is known as emotional intelligence. When healthy each emotion tells us something about ourselves, and how we are experiencing the current situation, or life circumstances. They let us know when we are moving in the right direction, or when we have fallen onto a tangential path. They let us know if we are healthy or unhealthy. They tell us when we are comfortable with things or uncomfortable. They even alert us to danger and tell us to make a hasty escape.

            Each emotion has its own meaning, has its own set of information that we can use to create decisions and choices to either create beneficial changes and outcomes, or negative ones. Sadness is often how we deal with loss, and tells us when something was important to us. It tells us that we need to allow the energy to flow to let go of something. Anger lets us know in no uncertain terms that a boundary has been crossed and we are not ok with it. Depression tells us that we have fallen off our paths and have been doing things that offer no fulfillment and purpose to us. Happiness tells us that we are experiencing a moment that stands out, a moment that is beautiful. Of course this is very simplified and each emotion then requires us to do some soul searching.

Why Emotional Information Is Important

The reason emotional information is important is because it alerts us to something that we need to address or experience. If we are angry we need to start asking what boundary has been crossed and what do we need to do to reinstate it and protect ourselves. If we are depressed we need to evaluate our decisions and current endeavors to find out which one no longer works. Then we can start to search for what will allow us to be fulfilled and live with purpose. Understanding and embracing our emotional intelligence gives us such a huge advantage in life. It tells us everything we need to know. It can help guide us to create better situations and can alert us to where the lesson lays in our mistakes and failures. The other benefit to being connected to our emotional intelligence is that we don’t fight against our emotions. We learn to be at peace with them, even the uncomfortable ones. We recognize that they aren’t meant to be fixed; they ebb and flow and dissipate and enrich our experiences. When we no longer grasp them and or try to hold them, or force them down we free ourselves from so much encumbrance and exhaustion.

When You Disconnection From Emotional Information

When you disconnect from your emotional intelligence it creates a disharmony internally. The body begins to store all the emotional information you no longer process leading to aches, pains and disease. The emotions go from flowing and healthy to pent up and toxic. Instead of just anger we feel blackout rage. Instead of depression we feel suicidal. Instead of happiness we feel hollow or at the very other end of the scale we feel numb. When we feel nothing at all we are no longer experiencing life, we are no longer experiencing much of anything. When emotions become toxic they take over our experience. A healthy emotion is just a small part of our experience. We are the witness in the same way as we are aware of our thoughts. When an emotion is toxic we become lost in the experience and power of the toxic emotion as it finally is felt and released. Most of the time when we experience these breaks of control we quickly try to grab the emotion and stuff it back down. Then we go on damage control and hope no one was caught in the cross fire.

            The other downside to disconnecting from your emotional intelligence is loosing your connection to your internal compass. When this happens and things spiral and failures mount you loose trust in yourself. People begin to cross boundaries because you don’t even know where they are. You are doing things that you don’t want to do because you don’t even know what you want to do. Lack of emotional information leads to loss of identity and purpose.

How Do You Re-claim Your Emotional Intelligence and Foster Self Trust?

In order to re-claim your emotional intelligence and gain trust in yourself again, you must first create a safe space. You must learn what each emotion means, and what questions they bring up that you must ask yourself. Finally they require you to be honest with yourself and create actions from the information.  If you haven’t disconnected from your emotional information, and have no toxic emotional buildup, it is not part of our culture to explore and understand emotions. This leads to people having all the emotions that are normal but absolutely no understanding as to what they mean or why they are happening. This is deeply confusing.

If you have disconnected from your emotions then you must create a safe space to begin to feel and release pent up toxic emotion. You may need to mourn, yell, rage, cry, laugh and move your body to let it out. This is best done with support from either professionals or friends. Taken slow and easy this gradual release will allow you to begin to experience emotion in a healthy way once again. Once the toxic build up is finally released you will experience lightness, a gaiety and an energy boost. Then you must begin the journey of learning what the healthy emotions feel like, what they mean and the actions they may require.

Why Horses Are So Good At Helping Teach Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is such an important piece of our life experience, and can enrich that life experience exponentially. There are many workshops, books and courses catered to help you explore your own emotional information to improve your emotional IQ. I personally find that Equine Facilitated Therapy is extraordinarily powerful at helping us to learn emotional intelligence. Horses operate through understanding and communicating through emotional and physical energy patterns. This is their main language! They can tell exactly what we are feeling, and exactly what we are holding onto and avoiding. They then through behaviors and physical body language mirror and communicate this back to us. They then offer us unconditional support as we play, release and try to understand the information they give us. They teach us different tools and ways of being with our emotions and ourselves. They allow us to practice these emotions in a safe and healthy way. They allow us to practice setting boundaries, and laughing and being vulnerable. They do all of this with compassion and humility.

If you need a little bit of help understanding your own internal emotional compass and have felt drawn to horses then the Emotional Intelligence Equine Workshop is for you. To find out more CLICK HERE

To internal peace and contentment

Charlotte Brammer

Living Clarity

http://www.livingclarity.ca

Creating Chemistry With Life

How Body Image Leads to Complacency in Life

In a society that is so focused on, to the point of obsessed with, body image and unreal expectations of perfect beauty it isn’t that surprising that even the smallest wavering’s from that ideal would attract our mirth and downright hatred. We feel unattractive, undesirable, like a fake, undeserving and yet yearning for our needs to be met; you get the idea. In a way these external quarks about our bodies become our only focus for these internal feeling states. Like if only I didn’t have … then I could have… We pour all our feelings into them believing and associating them with why we aren’t getting what we want and why we are stuck where we our. There are some benefits to this symbiosis if you will of body hatred. It allows us to step away from the uncomfortable feelings until we look into the mirror or focus on what we can’t seem to have which puts us face first with our target of hate. Unless of course it has come to a point where the body hatred is all pervasive and never relenting.

The Emotional Origins 

It allows us from realizing that these feelings of lack or disgust originate from inside ourselves because we bought into what society tells us about ourselves. It isn’t our extra weight that makes us feel like shit, don’t forget only a few hundred years ago extra weight was seen as the height of beauty and a status icon for higher class citizens. It is that we were told at some point to feel bad about who were inherently were, often times based on the most ridiculous measurements. The other thing it allows us to avoid is that we can simply choose to stop feeling this way. I can sense your anger at that statement, none the less it is true regardless of all the arguments your mind is shouting at you right now.

The Payoffs To This Behaviour

The other benefit that we receive from continuing our external based hatred is that it allows us to completely avoid taking risks. Well if I can’t get… because of… then why even bother. In this way we can insulate ourselves from having to reach out and be vulnerable, from having to try and maybe fail. It keeps us from having to dust ourselves of and try again, and maybe again, and maybe again learning along the way until we become successful by getting what we want. This body shaming and body hating is our ticket to complacency. In which ways does your body faux pas allow you to avoid taking risks, avoid taking responsibility for the fact that you can create the things in your life that you believe you can’t because of it? What are your body faux pas, when did they start and why? How have they benefited you up until now?

Behaviours That Are Out Of Alignment  

            It doesn’t just stop there; it can even be certain behaviors that we do that give us the same hatred focal point and the same outcome. Which behaviors that you do, or that you have begun to do make you feel the same way, like you will never have something in your life that you really want? When did it start and why? How do you feel about it? How has this pattern benefited you up until now? In the case of behaviors in some instances they aren’t actually in line with whom we are as healthy individuals; like my OCD, or smoking as examples. This doesn’t mean that we can’t create what we truly want as long as we have these behaviors, quite the opposite. But with both body and behaviors if we are out of balance then we can choose to work to get back into balance. What we need to do is hold the intention that it is for self-love that we are doing the work to get back into balance rather then because it will lead to us attaining the external outcome that we desire.

The Beginning of Letting Go

There also comes the point where you have to analyze where these judgments and baselines are coming from. Trying to bring the unhealthy teachings to light has been taken on by many individuals raising the call to question and heal. Yet we still go on buying into what is being churned out for us as beliefs and views about ourselves. Media, society as a whole it doesn’t matter. The people setting the standards are no different, no wiser, no smarter then you. They also represent a very small minority that is very out of touch with what real people actually find attractive. So it begs the question when will we stop letting others guide our views and finally ask ourselves what we find beautiful. What we find sexy? When we will stop allowing others to create our world, our reality, when will we own our own power to choose and to create? When will we let go and move forward? 

Click Here to find services to help you move forward

Cheers,

Charlotte Brammer

Moving Through Grief and Starting Over

The turmoil of Grief

I don’t know whether the hope, rage or the despair is better when grieving. You come to hate the hope because even though it allows a reprieve from the rage or despair that you feel, it also leads to another devastating crash when it flees again. On the other hand the depths of despair are so deep you wonder how you will ever climb out again as those who care about you tell you that it will get better and you pray their words are right. You become addicted to the rage because at least in some small way it empowers you and you feel neither hope nor despair but a smoldering hatred that gives you a small freedom, but then you realize what it does to you and you begin to hate the hate because it twists your body and soul in ways that feel wrong. In the meantime you walk one day, one moment at a time in world that has shifted, a world that you feel will never be the same, a world that has lost the allure and the vivid colors it once held for you.

You find yourself in a world where the smallest things break you open, leave you uncovered to the world, to yourself and you hate what has happened to you. You remember a time when it wasn’t so, but can no longer feel it. Or even worse you can feel it in all it roundness and when the dream fades you are reminded in a very visceral way the truth of your loss once again. You start to avoid places and things, can’t stand watching movies or TV or music because they all hold your desperate heart in their uncaring palms, fingers pressing on your loss ever so slightly. Perhaps you gain the courage to face the places that hold the potential to make you feel but they do not alleviate the feelings in the moment though they may shorten the time it takes to climb out of the mourning process.

The twisting of the Grieving Process

Reading about the stages of grief can be helpful, understanding the process was helpful for me because at least I knew that what I are going through is normal, is real and I wasn’t crazy. However when you are grieving and dealing with your own daemons, which twist and churn the feelings to attack your very core, your very worth it is another thing completely. When in the depths of your despair instead of merely feeling the loss, the daemons turn the loss into validation that you are flawed, unworthy and unlovable. In your hope the daemons turn your hope to shame over your weakness in not being strong enough to not want the one who hurt you. Even if you were strong enough to be the one that walked away from something that was not healthy your daemons tell you are weak to remember the good times and be sad. They laugh at your pain and tell you that you deserve it, what were you thinking. All the while your life has changed and now you need to find a way through all of this to create an entirely new life, find a connection to a new vision, to new dreams while mourning the loss of the ones you held so dear just a little while ago.

Creating a New Life While We are Broken Open

I was asked to write about the grieving process; at first I was hesitant because it is a vastly important and vastly shared experience and I wasn’t sure if I could do it justice. What I realized as I thought about my own experiences is that I have a vast amount to share and say. What I also know is how hard it is to have to change your entire life and create something entirely new while grieving. This is almost impossible when you are just trying to survive, when feelings of numbness take hold and you don’t even care if you live or die, if you stay on the subway platform or you jump off. How can we find the motivation, the energy to get up and create something of inspiration when it takes all we have just to crawl out of the blankets and put socks on our feet? How can we possibly put on a brave face when the world itself has shifted and nothing is the same to have the conversations that will decide the directions that our lives take? How is it that we learn to cope and try to remain balanced as our internal tides climb from rage to despair to hope to acceptance to rage with no warning, no pattern that we can see? When our daemons and unhealthy past beliefs attack us in our greatest pain?

New Growth from the Forest Fire of Loss

And yet we do, we find a way, we tap vast pools of strength we never knew we had, we make our way through the crucible and find ourselves forged anew. We look in the mirror and ask where it came from, the ability to stand through adversity and survive. Once we are out the other side we wonder how it is we had the strength to create a new life, new growth out of the forest fire of loss. There is so much potential in grief for self-healing, for self-love and care, for new growth. It allows us to see things within that we normally wouldn’t see and allows us the opportunity to purge our daemons once and for all so that we have the freedom to feel our losses free from shame and guilt so that we can be cleansed and made whole once again. I know in my own experience that there were a few things that helped me be able to create anew.

• Understanding the grieving process

1. The stages of grief – Denial and or hope, anger, sorrow, bargaining and acceptance
2. How the stages don’t go in order and don’t finish all at once but come in waves and interchange with one another
3. That as time goes on the waves of anger, sorrow and hope begin to ease each time, the lows aren’t as low; how acceptance and peace begin to become stronger and longer each time we come out of the darkness
4. Learning the lessons that the experience holds for us

• Understanding how our own unhealthy and negative beliefs create more stress and despair. Understanding how to let them go and move into a healthier place
• Understand the difference between pure unaltered grief and when our own stuff is interfering
• Understanding how to create beneficial change in the first place, the pitfalls and the steps
• Allowing the tides to flow with self care and compassion
• Creating a new vision in alignment with our truth
• Taking small steps one at a time to build again
• Accepting the help of our support systems and reaching out rather then isolating

Moving Forward

It is never easy, but we aren’t alone. Like anything else in life we are guaranteed greater success if we understand the rules and foundations in the first place. The grieving process is no different; even if we wish it were something we could bypass all together. One step, one day, one wave at a time until we emerge onto dry land once more and look back in appreciation of ourselves and of the lives we now live. The loss of a loved one, of property, of our significant other, of a way of life, of a violation, of a betrayal is devastating; all loss is. With the right tools you can make your way through, you can build again; you can create the life you desire. The Envision Series of workshops dive into how to heal, how to create change, how to build a vision and a life that is in alignment with your own powerful truth. It will give you the skills and knowledge to be your own therapist so that you can create whatever you desire.

Charlotte Brammer

For more information Click Here