The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 96 - New Dreams

Transcript:

Jen: Hi, Peter.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: I finally revived my blog.

Pete: I noticed, I noticed.

Jen: It went dark for a moment.

Pete: It did.

Jen: But I revived the blog. And the first post back has gotten a lot of comments from my current clients, specifically, a section about old dreams.

Pete: Hmm. Old dreams. Color me curious. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay, so my first blog post back after going dark for a little while...

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: ...was my quarterly review of quarantine. And now that we're in Quarantine Q2, it was time to look back at Quarantine Q1.

Pete: Alright, and what did you see? What did you learn? What was in, what was in Q1 that we need to talk about?

Jen: Well, I'll...I can talk you through, um, all five points I made super quickly, and then I will share with you the one that I think is really worth digging into.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: So, essentially, these are like my five key takeaways from Quarantine Q1. The first is that social distancing and physical distancing are not the same thing.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And that we need to practice social closeness. Second, we have to give ourselves grace. Because we do not know what is happening, and so we can't expect ourselves to know what is happening. A little grace goes a long way. Third, leaders are everywhere.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: This is the chance for people to raise their hand and raise their voice, for creativity and creating are essential. And five...this is the piece I want to talk about. Old dreams may have died, and that's okay.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: And so this piece came to me because I've been having a lot of one-on-one meetings with clients recently, where I can just feel the tension in the silence, that there's something that's trying to break through the silence. And when we finally dig into it, what seems to be at the root is that there is an obligation to an old dream that was only possible to realize in the old version of the world.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And that there's actually a new dream (or at least the seed of a new dream) forming, and there's a lot of guilt, and shame, and heaviness that goes along with letting the old dream go and allowing the new dream to grow. And it's been amazing to dig in to...and deeply emotional for people, but once they give themselves permission to just say out loud, "I think I might want something new. Or, I think I might care about something else. Or, I think I have a new dream." ...It's amazing to see what follows. But getting to that point of saying it out loud is, is very tense.

Pete: Mmm. I can see why people are reacting to this moment...this, this reflection. I'm really curious about the choice of words. Which I'm sure was very deliberate, knowing you. Which was the, the obligation of an old dream.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: Which just feels like something worth noodling on, or unpacking a little bit. Because I think I've mentioned this in one of our recent episodes, this idea that I was noodling on recently. It might have been in Principles, the episode called Principles, on things that we do because we feel obliged to do them versus things that we do because we want to do them or we care about that thing. And I actually did an exercise, and had a few clients do this exercise, where you go through your Google calendar or your calendar of choice and just take stock of what are the things that you've done in the last month (or in this case, maybe the last quarter, or you could extend it to the last six months and look at a larger time frame), and just take stock of what have you done out of obligation versus what have you done because you truly cared about that particular thing? Or because you wanted to do that thing? And so, I'm just really curious about your choice of word. Of, firstly, like...to me a dream doesn't necessarily invoke this idea that it's something that I feel obliged to do, because it's my dream. So, in theory, I've created this dream because I cared about that thing. However, I guess I'm asking: at what point has that dream become an obligation, do you think?

Jen: Well, I think it's closely related to the concept of ignoring sunk costs.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: That...I feel like for the listeners who might not know the context here, it might be useful to point out that the overwhelming majority of the clients I work with are theatre artists. Specifically, Broadway community artists, and Broadway has not been operating since the middle of March.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And to be a person pursuing a theatrical career at that level requires so much commitment, resources, discipline, perseverance. I mean, there's just so much that gets poured into that.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And the direct, focused resources that have gone specifically to that dream of cultivating a full and rich life on a New York Broadway stage...when they take stock of the years, the sweat, the blood, the tears, the sacrifices that were made in order to pursue that, it's really hard to ignore sunk costs, even when in this quarantined moment, something else has ignited their curiosity or their passion. Maybe it's another city, maybe it's another way to express themselves artistically, but the thing that is keeping them..."stuck" isn't the right word. Maybe, from speaking it out loud.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: It's like, "What about all of...what about the twenty years I spent in the dance studio?".

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "What about the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars I've spent to bring myself to a world class level of artistry?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And so, I think there's a lot of mourning of the investment.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: But what's interesting is once they talk about the thing that they're newly curious about, they light up.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: I mean, you really see this possibility take over. And the thing I keep trying to express is like, it's important to have things that you care about, it's important to have dreams. And when dreams become the thing that's holding you back from exploring something new, that's when we have to really start to work through it.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, I'd written down the word "mourning" as you were talking. And you ended up using it yourself. As like, it sounds like a, understandably, a period of mourning. And, I mean, what's wild is that it's only been a quarter. You know, like, I think most people have had that moment where it's been like, "Have we been in this pandemic for three years? Or, what?" Like...

Jen: I know.

Pete: So the fact that they're, some of them are still mourning is like totally understandable. Because I mean, even the word "still" feels inappropriate. Because three months is not that long for something that you've spent, to your point, maybe twenty years of your life honing your craft to pursue. So, yeah, I think there's a level of mourning, for sure. And yeah, it's very curious. And I guess, in some ways, unsurprising. If we think about some of the conversations you and I have had in many of these podcasts that, that being brave enough to say it out loud, being brave enough to change your mind and then share that, it can be, it can feel quite freeing, but it can also feel quite daunting. And I use the word "brave" very deliberately, because you have a bunch of expectations and obligations (to use the word that we talked about earlier), for sure that you place on yourself. And then I imagine, I would assert, if I was to put myself in the shoes of someone like that, knowing the type of person I am, I would probably be worried about what other people are going to think or say about me. And that maybe some of them are going to say, "Huh. You sort of wasted all that time, and money, and energy, and resources.". And that, for me, would be something that would be really difficult to admit to myself, I think. Hmm.

Jen: Well, I think a key idea here is that the time you've invested, the resources you've invested in things you have cared about are never a waste. And you can't possibly know the ways in which that investment will shape your future. Ultimately, you get to decide what you carry forward and what you leave behind. And, you can always revive a dream.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: So if, if you decide...like I have, I have two clients and they happen to be partners. And they shared with me that they are moving out of New York and moving to Chicago. They felt called to Chicago during this time. And they felt like they had this dream of trying a new city, and a new lifestyle, and like being artists in a different place. And the truth is, if/when Broadway reopens, if they want to move back to New York, they can. They can.

Pete: They can. Yeah. Yeah, that's such a rich insight. Which is, we...I think, often we get nervous about or fearful of decisions, or changing our dreams or goals. Because we think that it's permanent, and that we can't change our mind. And it's like, worth reminding ourselves that in the same way that you might be changing your mind right now about your old dreams, you can change your mind again in twelve months time, or twenty-four months time, or six months time. And it reminds me, actually, a little bit of the episode we did way back when on experiments, where we explored the idea of, "What if all of the things that we were doing, what if the projects we were taking part in, the dreams that we had, what if we frame them as experiments?". Knowing that we might not be sure of what the outcome might be, to your point, we can't necessarily know the ways in which this will shape our future. However, also to your point again (which was such a good one), which was: an investment in yourself is never a waste. So, invest in that experiment and see what might happen. You know, to date in this conversation in the last fifteen minutes, what we've been talking about is dreaming and then acting on the dream. And I wonder, what place...what place just dreaming for the sake of dreaming has. In terms of imagining a different life for yourself or a different dream for yourself, and just kind of giving yourself permission to explore that train of thought without the pressure of having to execute on it, necessarily. But to just give ourselves permission to daydream. I heard...I think it was Derek Sivers very recently talking about this, where he sometimes pulls out a notepad or a Google Doc, and like, goes down a rabbit hole, really, of writing, "Imagine if I went and lived in New Zealand for twelve months, and explored what it would be like to live off the grid. And I would do this...". And he wrote this like...he daydreamed. He dreamed what that life might be like. In the end, he actually executed on it. But what he talks about is, he's done this for hundreds and hundreds of different scenarios. And he doesn't necessarily act on them all. So I'm curious about like the, the difference between a dream that we then pursue because we think we're interested in it, versus a dream that we might just dream and we don't necessarily pursue. And maybe that's taking us in a pointless direction.

Jen: No, I don't think it is. Because the ability to dream, uh, it's a creative act. Using your imagination is part of what it means to exercise your creativity. And we know that part of creativity is finding the connection point between things. So if you were to daydream right now, or if I were to daydream right now about what it might be like to live in New Zealand, and live off the grid, and only eat a plant-based diet, and wake up every morning and salute the sun, and, you know, drink some herbal concoction before I go to bed, and ensure that I get my eight hours. Okay, so I might...and, you know, like swim in a freshwater pond. That might not necessarily be the thing that I pursue, but it might help me connect the dots between this dream version of how I might live, and how I'm living right now. And where I could make some changes in my existing experience. So, I don't think it's a fruitless venture to give yourself permission to daydream.

Pete: Yeah. And I think that, tying it back to what we talked about earlier, the thing I'm realizing that dreaming, daydreaming, pondering in that space can do, is help us get clarity on what we care about. Is, we could explore that, that beautiful New Zealand example that you played out, and then be like, "Oh, wait. None of this is important to me. Like, I don't actually care about any of this.". Or you might have the realization of like, "Actually, I really care about being able to live amongst nature, and give myself permission to switch off. Okay, cool. So maybe I won't go to New Zealand, but how could I incorporate that into my life?". And I talked to you recently about this distinction between the question of "what do you want to do", which is something I was asked a lot recently by a bunch of different people...it was almost like the world was conspiring against me to all ask me the same question from different angles. And the question was a version of like, "What do you want to do? Like, what does Pete want?". And I had a lot of tension, trying to explore that question. Because it just didn't feel right. And it's probably an entire separate episode, in terms of why I felt tension with that question. But the question I ended up landing on, thanks to some brilliant coaching, was: What do you care about? And I think that daydreaming, or dreaming, or pondering, or giving ourselves permission to let go of old dreams is an exercise in getting clear on: what do we care about? Knowing full well that that can be different to what you cared about last time you said a dream, and it will likely be different to what you care about in the future.

Jen: A song just came into my head, which I won't sing for you.

Pete: Can you sing it now? Is that what's happening?

Jen: [laughter] No. But what I, what I will do is point us towards the Cinderella Disney movie for a moment. The end of her song, "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes. She sings, "Have faith in your dreams, and someday your rainbow will come smiling through. No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true.".

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.