Spread Your Wings

What are your biggest challenges?

Oh to be a dreamer. To have a creative mind so full of ideas. Book ideas, home projects, business plans, furthering my education, parties, anything that takes imagination. When one of these grand plans catches my attention, it can be a vice like grip. It can become an obsession. I’ll make lists, screenshot pictures, endlessly research. I have purchased expensive business planning software to vet out the feasibility of several possible ventures.

With so many dreams swirling in my mind just begging to come to fruition, the challenge becomes lack of follow through. Sometimes it’s due to my ADHD. Sometimes the idea truly is not feasible. But most often I lose steam because I convince myself I don’t have the qualifications. I lack the necessary skill set. It’s too risky. I’m too old. There is a snaky voice in the back of my mind always asking, “Who do you think you are?”

I have a yearning to write a memoir. I actually have a decent start on a first draft. But it puts myself and family under an intimidating spotlight, potentially causing as much backlash as catharsis. I worked on it for over a year before suddenly quitting, convincing myself that it simply wasn’t anything anyone would want to read. Blogging involves questioning if I really have anything of interest to say. Perhaps all of these words inside me are insipid and self indulgent. Do any of these thoughts or stories even leave an impact, or am I just screaming into a void?

When it comes to teaching yoga, due to injury, my own physical practice has declined and I wonder if I have the spiritual acumen to be the inspiration I aspire to be. I am a master reiki practitioner, and even though I feel the universal energy flowing through me, I hesitate to share it with others lest they think I’m a fraud. I would like to complete a certification in integrative somatic coaching, but who am I to coach anyone when I am a mess so much of the time? I raise butterflies and keep bees, but feel I lack the education to take those projects any further than a hobby.

My biggest fantasy combines all of these aspirations. What I want more than anything in this world is to have my own greenhouse studio, offering a combination of reiki, yoga and somatic coaching surrounded by beautiful flowers and the soothing flutter of butterfly wings. It is a huge undertaking, and a big financial risk. It is the most luscious gorgeous idea I have ever had, I can see it so vividly in my mind. But I don’t know anything about operating a greenhouse and I’m going to be 47 next month.

I obsessed over this vision for months and months. I did a whole business plan mapping out startup costs, operating expenses and projected income. I researched financing and whether or not it would be better as a non-profit. I came up with a name and a logo and a mission statement. And then it just fizzled out like a sparkler on the 4th of July. One minute a blinding light and the next just a burnt out metal stick.

I’m still holding onto the stick though. I am completing additional yoga trainings, and remembering that I actually am a pretty amazing yoga teacher. I’m going to take that somatic coaching training, if for no other reason than to continue healing my own mess. I’ve tossed around getting a small backyard greenhouse where I can offer private classes and sessions.

It seems my challenge isn’t following through, but believing in the gifts I have to offer. Maybe dreaming for the sake of dreaming is good enough. Maybe self indulgence is just another Little Victory.