Your financial life: dreaming better, not bigger

Julie Murphy • April 3, 2012

How often do you picture what you want? It’s what I suggest you do first when you are ready to revamp your finances. Visualizing the kind of life you want to live is a good exercise to get you started on your way to your ideal life. But when you do this, do you hold yourself back a little? Often times, my clients get so caught up in the everyday happenings of their various accounts that they won’t allow themselves to dream bigger. They go into this exercise discouraged about the present or so focused on a specific future that it makes dream smaller. The biggest limitations in life are the ones you put on yourself – personally, professionally and financially.

What type of dreamer are you?

Do you think your dreams are attainable or completely unrealistic? “Pie-in-the-sky” dreamers are quite often their own biggest crabs in their bucket. They think about the way they wish their life to be – stable financial foundation, beautiful dream home, a career that they love – but they look at where they are and deem that life impossible. There’s no way they can create this abundant life when they are coming from a place of scarcity, they think.

Dreamers that believe their dreams are catchable look at where they are and accept it. This is their current reality. And if they could create this, then they can also create the life of their dreams, no matter how unrealistic it they seem. They don’t view their finances as a crutch or obstacle their end point; they view it as an aide. No matter how bleak their current money situation is, they know that it can all change today.

Having the courage to dream

I worked with a client who, at 72 years old, was a widower, and his whole goal was to just save his money for his kids to inherit. I told him get busy living or get busy dying; he should try to find something he always dreamed of doing. He never could think of anything. Then I asked him if he had any regrets in life. He did: being a lawyer.

So I asked him, why not now?

He said people his age don’t go back to school. But I kept bringing it up to him on our quarterly meetings, asking him if he took the LSAT or looked up some schools. Over a year later, he showed up to my office with his law school acceptance letter. He not only finished law school, but practiced until he was 84. He had the courage to dream and live the rest of his days.

Are you looking at your dreams in a catchable way? You can absolutely do what my client did because it truly is never too late to go after what you want. So instead of being uncertain, look at your dreams as catchable. More specifically, be realistic about where you how, where you want to go and how you will get there.

Action step

I emphasize accepting where you are to get to where you want to be. But before you do that, it’s a good idea to picture what you want to go so you have an idea of the direction your first step should be in.

This week I want you to dare to dream not bigger, but better. Don’t hold back on your dreams because you think they’re not possible or unrealistic. Write down three of your most sincere dreams on a piece of paper, and read over what you wrote a few times a day. Don’t come from a place of judgment, but one of realism. Accepting where you are right now means also accepting the dreams you want for yourself in the future.

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