Dreams are for losers

I’m currently reading Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. Now, you might know who Shonda Rhimes is. You might not. She is best known as the showrunner — creator, head writer, and executive producer — of the television medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, its spin-off Private Practice, the political thriller series Scandal, and most recently, Bridgerton and Inventing Anna. However, if you have watched any of these series, it doesn’t mean that you know the real Shonda Rhimes.

If you want to get to know the real Shonda Rhimes, read her book. It’s raw, it’s honest, it’s funny, and it might just inspire you to change your life. It has inspired me in so many ways. One thing I appreciate about Shonda, is that she says it like it is. I’m not joking when I say her book is raw and honest. There is no pretense, no holding back. She shares what it’s like to be her and to have her life.

And today, I want to speak to you about a commencement speech she gave at her alma mater Dartmouth College in 2014, where she said this simple yet striking line: “Dreams are for losers”. Yes, you heard that right, she said dreams are for losers. She goes on to explain why.

You see, at almost every commencement speech someone will tell the graduates to go follow their dreams, or to never stop dreaming. And what Shonda says is that isn’t helpful advice. It won’t actually help you succeed, because dreamers aren’t successful. It’s doers that are successful.

If you are a dreamer, you might spend your whole life blue skying everything. You might dream of some day when your dream finally comes true. You might spend time doodling, talking about your dream, reading up about others who are living your dream, imagining what it will be like when your dream comes true… all the while never actually getting into action to CREATE the thing you are dreaming about.

So, Shonda tells the truth. She shares that when she was studying at Dartmouth, her dream was to become Nobel Prize winning novelist, Toni Morrison. And then she realised that Toni Morrison already had that job and wasn’t keen on giving it up, so Shonda herself had to figure out who she wanted to be and had to get to work becoming herself. And here is the most interesting part, becoming a screenwriter was never part of her dream.

She made the choice to go to film school and discovered there that she loved writing scripts. She discovered that it suited her style of writing and allowed her the freedom to make up stories – which she shares right at the start of her book, is the thing she does best, i.e., make up stories and lie.

You see, Shonda had to get into action in her life, she had to try out stuff, she had to put herself in situations where she had the opportunity to learn new things and to discover what she liked. She had to become a doer to become a successful screenwriter, not a dreamer.

Steve Chandler draws a similar distinction between DOERS and FEELERS. He shares that Feelers check in with their feelings to first go gauge their mood before they decide whether they will engage in a specific activity. The problem is that feelings produce resistance to what we want to do in life. You will never feel like doing the hard thing you KNOW will help you change your life. You will always feel like it’s too much work, or too hard, or like you are too tired.

Doers, on the other hand, just do the thing and then check in with their feelings afterwards. They follow a very simple three-step process to creating what they want in life. First, they figure out what they want to achieve. Second, they figure out what needs to be done to achieve the goal they have set out to achieve. Third, they just do it.

Whether you are a Doer or a Feeler has nothing to do with your personality. It has everything to do with choice. Choice is the key. You can choose either one at any time in any situation. So, Steve’s advice it to ask yourself “What do I want to DO about this?”, instead of asking “How do I FEEL about this?”

This doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention to our feelings, or we disregard how others feel. It simply means that we appreciate the fact that feelings are simply signposts that point us to what we need to pay attention to, but they are not facts. Or as Susan David would say, “Feelings are data, not directives”.

I grew up around dreamers. People who were always dreaming of one day when their ship would come in, when they would meet the right person, when they would finally get a job that pays well, when they would live in a bigger house, or have more money, or drive that car, etc. And what I learnt about dreamers, is that they never DO. They never find time between all the dreaming to test out whether the thing they say they want, is actually something they really truly want.

The only way to know if something you say you want is something you really want, is to turn one day, into day one, and to test it out. Take a step and try something new. Put yourself in a new situation, risk not knowing how to do something, and have the patience and courage to figure it out, and then stick with it for long enough to really figure out if it is for you.

I’ve shared before that I find it easy to get into action around something. Once I’ve decided, I don’t struggle to motivate myself. I just get into the doing of the thing until it’s done, because when it comes to creating what I want in life, I’m a Doer, not a Feeler. I don’t wait until I feel like doing something, because I know that I might never feel like doing it. And through the years, I’ve learnt a lot through doing.

As a runner and a writer, I can attest to choosing doing over feeling. There are many days that I don’t feel like going out for a run. I can come up with a million excuses as to why I can’t or shouldn’t go for a run; especially when it’s cold and it’s raining, and I didn’t sleep much the night before. But, I’m a doer, so I simply lace up my shoes, and I go out the door and go run anyway.

Of course, the first five to ten minutes always feel like the hardest part. It’s the part of the run, where my feelings are the strongest and my body and mind are still resisting the run. However, around the 10-minute mark, my body starts settling into the run, and I start having fun. By the time I reach 20 minutes, I feel great and I’m so grateful that I decided to go for a run. It’s the runner’s high everyone talks about.

What I want to share with you, is that that high is actually the Doer’s high, not just the runner’s high. Try it with anything you’ve been putting off and see for yourself.

Whether my clients struggle with writing, painting, running, selling, it doesn’t matter, I always suggest they set aside dedicated time in their calendar to do the thing they are putting off and I invite them to COMMIT to doing the thing anyway. Don’t trust it, test it. Run the experiment and see what happens.

Steve suggests you treat any activity you are having a hard time getting into action on or any block (e.g., writer’s block, painter’s block, seller’s block) you might be experiencing as if you are painting a room. When you want to paint a room in your house, you simply decide that on Saturday, you will paint the room and on Sunday, you will finish it. And so, on Friday, you get all the equipment and paint you are going to need, and come Saturday morning, you simply start painting, and you do one stroke at a time until the whole room is completed.

You can do that with ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING. I’ve had clients revive the intimacy in their marriages by DOING instead of feeling and dreaming about one day. I’ve had clients create clients and build businesses by taking one step at a time (read one brush stroke at a time) and by simply being in action on the thing they say they want to be doing instead of just talking about it or dreaming about it.

At any point in time, one day can become day one for you. You choose. And I’ve had many day ones in my life. There was day one when I decided to get a part-time job and pay my way through university. There was day one when I got my first job and had to figure out how to be an adult in the real world. There was day one when I joined a running club and ran my first mile and became a runner. There was day one when I said yes to a relationship with someone and became a partner to someone. There was day one when I said yes to staying with that person for the rest of my life and to build a marriage and a life with him. There was day one of choosing to be a mother and taking the steps I needed to take to become one. There was day one in choosing to immigrate and taking those first steps to actually make that happen. There was day one in choosing to heal from my pain and trauma and to tell a different story. There was day one of deciding that I’m a professional coach and taking action in my business to create what I wanted. These are but a few day ones for me and I know there will be many more to come.

Just like with Shonda, I’ve also learnt that my original dream didn’t actually suit me. It wasn’t what I really wanted. When I was growing up, I wanted to become a lawyer. I now know that that was not my dream. It was my father’s dream for me, and I had latched on to it and convinced myself that I wanted to become a lawyer, enticed by the idea that I might actually fight for those who do not have a voice, and actually make a difference in the world by practicing law.

It was in the doing of the thing, that I discovered that it wasn’t for me, that I didn’t want to be a lawyer, that it was in so many ways the opposite of who and what I wanted to be in the world.

I’m going to tell you how much time I spent on becoming a lawyer. I completed Law School with two degrees in tow, one in business, one in law. And I spent a year working in public practice. I spent five years of my life training to become a lawyer. And it was in that final year, working in a law clinic, that I discovered how much I hated law. I went home crying every single day.

Here is the funny thing, I was actually good at my job. I received awards and from the outside, I even looked successful, but on the inside, I felt dead. I felt like a puppet in a system that I could not change. I felt inauthentic and the work simply did not align with my yearning to serve people and to make a difference. It wasn’t the kind of difference I wanted to make.

So, I did the hard thing and I quit. I course corrected, and ended up in a job that had been my first love from a young age – teaching. I loved learning. I loved teaching, and I was a natural at it. It was something that resonated deeply, and that made me feel alive on the inside.

I started over from scratch, working as a part-time teaching assistant and tutor. I kept going until I finally landed a permanent position as a lecturer at one of the top 50 universities in the world. And the work was demanding. And I didn’t quit. As I shared, once I commit, I commit fully. I immerse myself with heart and soul into my work, and I don’t stop until I see results.

I left academia after 10 incredible years, and then I tried my hand at working in industry for an executive search company. I hated it and I was so frustrated in that job. It wasn’t the kind of job where I could truly use my strengths and show up as my best self. I didn’t stop trying. I kept taking initiative and trying new things, until I realised that it simply wasn’t for me. I gave it two years, before I left. I wanted to know for myself that I gave it my best try, that I gave it long enough to really know if was for me or not, so that I would have no regrets when I walked away from it.

And finally, when we moved to Canada, I discovered the magic and wonder of coaching. I had been coaching all my life without knowing it. And just like with teaching, something inside of me woke up. This work aligns with my deep inner core. I was always going to be a coach. I had been preparing all my life to do this work. I simply didn’t know it at the time. Every step I had taken had led me to this place here where I get to do this work in the world and I’m truly grateful for every single lesson along the way.

And here is the important piece, I don’t’ regret any of the experiences I’ve had, because each one helped shape me as a person, each one taught me something, each one helped me become the person I am today and I’m a better coach because of those experiences.

You might listen to the years I spent studying and working in law or the two years I spent working for an executive search firm and think that it was wasted time. But I don’t see it that way. It was time well spent figuring out who I am and what I want.

If I had not seen through the law thing, I may have always wondered about it, but going all the way, gave me the sense of clarity and certainty that I made the right choice for me. I have no regrets and I learnt a lot about myself through that work. I learnt more about who I am during that time than any other, because I was confronted with having to discern between my own wants and desires and those of the people around me. I was confronted with my own values and actions in the world, and I had to make tough decisions and face rejection and disappointment from my family, and find the courage to stand firm in what I wanted for myself.

The same is true for the two years I spent at the executive search firm. Those two years helped me slow down, rediscover some balance in my life, deepen who I am, and deepen my yearning to do my own thing and create something personally meaningful.

And as Shonda so beautifully shares in her commencement speech, through action she created a beautiful and amazing life that she could never have imagined dreaming of. She says, “My dreams did not come true, but I worked really hard, and ended up building an empire out of my imagination. So, my dreams can suck it… I absolutely love my life and I would not trade it for anyone else’s life ever.”

I feel the same way. My 18-year-old self could never have imagined that I would be living the life I’m living right now. The life I’m living right now far exceeds anything I could have imagined back then. My ignorant dreams back then did not reflect who I would become. They did not include the relationships I would build and nurture over time. They did not include marriage and partnership with someone. They did not include motherhood – and boy oh boy motherhood has been one of those big and life-changing experiences that I never thought I would have and that I am now so truly grateful for.

And my life right now reflects my growth as a person and how my values, interests, and strengths have changed over the years as I plunged wholeheartedly into things, ran experiments, tried out new things, until I felt like I had a handle on them. During every experiment I learnt something about myself, about life, about others. I gained new insights and perspectives and I became more grounded in who I wanted to be in the world and the kind of work that would truly make me come alive. I could not have done that by sitting on the sidelines of my life. I had to be a Doer, in action in my own life, taking one step and then another, co-creating WITH life and really allowing life to be the school of learning it is meant to be.

References:

1. Rhimes, S. (2016). Year of Yes: How to dance It out, stand In the sun and be your own person. New York: Simon and Schuster.
2. Rhimes, S. (2014). Shonda Rhimes ’91 Delivers Dartmouth’s Commencement Speech. Available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuHQ6TH60_I&ab_channel=Dartmouth