Know Where You Stand
A
is for ASSESS
“You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know understand it!”
It’s all about asking the right questions!
It’s time to ask yourself some tough questions: Why isn’t your dream a reality right now? What’s truly holding you back from the life you want? And perhaps most importantly, why is not having your dream such a problem for you?
Be honest with yourself. This isn’t the moment for flippant or sarcastic answers—dig deeper. If you feel anger or defensiveness bubbling up, that’s okay. It’s a normal reaction. I felt the same way the first time I faced these questions. But don’t let those emotions stop you. Acknowledge them, then push past them. Keep going until you uncover the truth.
If you want your dream to happen in your life, then buckle up buttercup and keep on going.
Mindset Adjustment
Let’s consider for a moment that when you don’t have something you want or need you’ve got a problem. The mindset shift Skipidee encourages is to see problems as good things—because problems can always be solved.
I’m taking a quick detour to talk about Problem Solving—the key to great problem solving, often better taught abroad than in U.S. schools, is first understanding the problem and realizing there’s more than one way to solve it.
Back in elementary school, my math teacher threw us a curveball: ‘Divide 13 in half,’ she said. Most of the class groaned and scribbled ‘6 1/2.’ Not me—I knew she was up to something. So, I wrote ’13’ but with a line through the middle. (Clever, right?)
The class cracked up, but the teacher didn’t. She smiled and asked, ‘What else?’ So, I tried ‘6.5.’ ‘What else?’ she pressed. That’s when I got creative: ‘THIR’ and ‘TEEN.’ Finally, I even wrote ‘110.1’—because, hey, binary!
By the end, we all got the lesson loud and clear: if you want the right answer, you’ve got to ask the right question. And isn’t that exactly what Einstein was getting at in his famous quote?
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
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Let’s say your dream is to create beautiful watercolor paintings. This isn’t true for you right now, so what’s the problem? Why is it a problem? Is it because you’ve tried painting, but your work doesn’t turn out the way you envision? Or is it that you haven’t even picked up a brush yet?
Like in the DREAM phase of the DARE process, the Assessment is best done as a written exercise, though to be honest, I wouldn’t fault you if you throw your notes away afterward.
The exercise below is going to help you get to the root cause of what’s holding you back. Read through the instructions, then set everything aside, get out paper and pen and tackle this exercise with gusto.
It should be a bit of a discovery process. Fair warning: it could be a little painful (for me it was almost like re-breaking wrongly set bones,) but afterward, I promise, if you go deep enough, even if you don’t go any further with my DARE process, you’ll start making real and significant progress even on your own.
So let’s start by looking at your itemized dreams list. Then, for each item on your list, you’re going to do the exercise below. I’ve seen people start to get the same answer over and over again. Maybe that will happen for you. That means you only have one real thing to work on to manifest your dreams.
But maybe, you’ll get a whole long list of answers which could seem overwhelming. But don’t let it bother you. You’ll learn what to do with it in the Route phase of the DARE process.
Do you really think what you don’t know can’t hurt you?
Think again!
My memory tells me I had an amazing childhood. Reality tells a different story. I grew up in a very poor family of migrant workers. My community was fearful, superstitious and stubbornly proud. We saved everything to hand down, recycle and reuse, especially food and clothing. So I learned creativity and innovation at the knee of my very thrifty grandmother who was brilliant because she had to be.
Grandma lived in constant fear, of shortage, of injury to someone she loved, of outsiders because they hated us, yet she always told me to dream big – which was hard to do with my preprogrammed view of the world. So, I dreamed as big as I could at the time but with each accomplishment, I cast my vision further.
Looking back, I realize my problem was believing in the stories my family told me. I’ve since learned to believe a new story about myself and I’m still working on creating my very happy ever after.
Celia was in her 4th month of pregnancy when she came to me for childbirth classes. She told me she was raised by an uncle and two older brothers after her mother died when she was ten years old. Imagine what it was like for her learning all the facts of life from men! Understandably, she was not comfortable with her body and all the changes happening due to pregnancy. Frankly, she was terrified.
We identified all her reasons for being afraid (fear was her biggest problem) and diffused them one by one. She studied the course materials, understood what her body and baby were doing, and had a very smooth, unmedicated birth.
Celia has since used the DARE process outlined in these pages to become a childbirth educator herself.
Brittany was a young mother who lived with her own mother across the road from me. Her daughter played with my children so she’d heard a lot about me. One day, Brittany asked if she could talk to me – openly and honestly – she wanted career guidance so she could do better for herself and finally move out on her own.
Her biggest problem was that she didn’t have a clue what she could do or should do.
We assessed her skills, her interests and her resources. We determined how to use what she already knew and then grow her value in a field that would provide her desired outcome.
She landed a position as an entry level IT System Administrator which paid twice as much as she had been making, and meanwhile attended night school that her employer paid for. She went on to become the director of the IT department.
Roadblocks
Challenges
Time Management
Beliefs
The slides show how to break down the problem when you’ve identified something stopping youR Dreams.
Remember, in the first step, D was for Dream.
In step 2, Asesss: you will identify all the things stopping you or holding you back from living your dream right now.
Note: Beliefs, Habits, Friends, Family, and Skills are universal. You may have other dream stoppers you’d like to address.
Step 3: Select one item from your list of dream stoppers to work with.
Make a list of the all your dream stoppers. These are “problems” you an solve. Work down your list until you arrive on small steps you can start taking action on – today.
In our example, the person held the belief that they weren’t good enough. To eliminate that problem, two major things need to happen. 1) Do things to improve their writing skills, and 2) practice.
The following example tackles the problem of not being good enough.
Roadblocks
Challenges
Time Management
Beliefs
Need More Help?
Deeper Dive: Exercise
Why don’t you already have your dream? What is stopping you?
That is THE QUESTION you need to answer. Over and over again.
Before you begin, let me offer two tips to ensure the process works for you the way it should. First of all – It’s very important that you don’t censor yourself. Don’t second guess. Don’t filter. But also, don’t get emotional. This isn’t a “blame” game. Simply answer the question as best and honestly as you can.
Second, this is not the time to go easy on yourself. If you want to live your dream, you need to get real. Don’t blame anyone or anything else, either. (Not the economy, or your body, not your brains or your mama.) The blame game is the lame game; blaming only gives your control away.
RECLAIM YOUR CONTROL! RIGHT HERE. RIGHT NOW.
If you’re not ready to take responsibility for the life you’re living, stop right here. Seriously—don’t read another word.
Stick with what you’ve always done, and you’ll keep getting the same life you’ve already got.
I think back to when I first realized what was holding me back and to be honest, I blamed my family and my upbringing. But we all have families, skeletons and ghosts. But, the deeper I went with the exercise below, the more I came to realize that my real problem was the behaviors I had developed: I was lazy and a smart aleck.
If you want different…. You gotta do different. You gotta be different. You gotta think different.
Here are a few prompts to kickstart your uncovering the problem keeping you from living your deam. =>
- I don’t already have what I want because I…
[possible answers look like: I don’t really know what my dream is.]
- And that’s because I… [ possible answers look like: I don’t know where to start. ]
- And I _____ instead of _________ [Procrastinate by spending a lot of time scrolling or watching movies instead of tackling my fears and learning new skills]
.
- I could…. [Stop all the distractions that keep me busy, home, alone. I could do some research, pick up a book, find new friends who encourage me, or take a class, or dig deep and commit to this DARE process.]
- But I don’t because…. [It’s overwhelming. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know who to ask. I am afraid I’ll fail.]
- And I also don’t…. [Like to study. Like to ask for help.]
- I could have my dream if I would just start …… [Thinking about my dream like a project and set goals or take this DARE process seriously!]
- I could have my dream already if I stopped …. [Wasting time. Wasting money. Wasting energy. Overeating. Procrastinating. Looking to be entertained. Hanging out with people who just want to kill time. Bashing myself. Hiding.]
Keep in mind, these are just prompts and the text in brackets are just random examples of what answers might look like. You need to look at each item on your Dreams List and ask yourself: Why don’t I have this already, over and over again, until you get to real answers.
The deeper you go with this part of the exercise the easier it is going to be to see what you need to do (or change) to start getting the life of your dreams.