The importance of dreaming

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On 8/28/2013, shortly after arriving home from dropping our oldest daughter at college, I sat at my computer and I started to dream.  I was inspired by the 50th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech which was all over social media.

DREAMING VIVIDLY

I watched the speech on YouTube.  I read about how it almost didn’t come to be…which was something I never learned in school.  Mahalia Jackson, a legendary gospel vocalist who regularly opened for Dr. King, did so that August day in 1963.  In the middle of his speech, she intervened.  She had heard him many times before and was familiar with his themes and she called out to him…

“Tell them about the dream, Martin.”

Did you know that wasn’t even written into the original speech?  Martin Luther King had so frequently talked about his dream that she knew it.  It had inspired her.   She knew its power.  She reminded him of it at that moment and the rest is history.

Vivid dreams have power.  They motivate you.  They inspire others.  So on 8/28/13 as I sat there sinking deeper into my own dream world, I decided to start a 30 day challenge and I made this post on Facebook:

30 day challenge:  I’m going to post an outrageous dream daily on a whim!  When I think “would i like doing _____?” I’m just going to ponder that publicly here.

In less than 3 days I made more progress on my dreams than ever before and officially started my 30 Dream Days blog on 8/30/13.   My intent was to inspire people to transform their lives in 30 days by giving themselves permission to dream…vividly.

DREAMING – A KEY TO CREATIVE CHANGE

I knew I was onto something but when I reflect back on that journey and the dreams I pondered, so many of them have come true already or will come true.  I could try to rationalize it with concepts like cognitive dissonance or the law of attraction but I know better now.  I know that the very act of dreaming vividly is part of the Thinking Skills Model (TSM) of Creative Problem Solving – the process I just learned as part of my master’s degree in Creativity and Change Leadership.  The interesting point here is that I am in this program because in my Enabling the Dreams of Others post I declared that I want to be a college professor, which set me on a search for master’s and PhD programs which led me to the International Center for Studies in Creativity.

In TSM terms this is called Visionary Thinking – describing a vivid and concrete picture of the desired future.  And its Affective Skill (emotion) is Dreaming – to imagine as possible your desires and hopes.

And I’m proof that developing your thinking skills is LIFE-CHANGING.  Creative Problem Solving helps train your thinking skills so that you can become a Creative Change Leader in your own domain.

Interested in learning more about the 30 Dream Days Challenge?