Pillar of Health 5: Dream Direction
Health is a funny thing. When you have it in abundance, everything is great. But when you don’t, it’s the most important thing that you have in your mind to achieve again.
The thing that many people forget all too often is that health is highly connected to our happiness and sense of fulfilment.
If we lead a life that doesn’t fit with our core values and doesn’t fulfil us, every facet of our life can become a burden.
Why exactly is this?
The less your current lifestyle fits with your core values, the more frequently your fight or flight system is active. If you take part in too many actions that activate your fight, flight, freeze reaction, this branch of the Autonomic Nervous System will be far too activated than is healthy for you.
You can’t effectively exercise, eat, and live healthy if you are under chronic stress.
When you’re under chronic stress, this is where disease, dysfunction, poor sleep, and a whole myriad of problems can begin to occur.
This is where the idea of Dream Direction comes in.
It’s the most impactful step you can take for increasing vitality, decreasing stress, and getting the body of your dreams.
Why?
Because change takes A LOT of energy.
You need to, deep down, really WANT to upgrade your health and wellness to effectively get it done. Because no coach, book, or friend can get inside of your brain and operate the body of yours.
Establishing a clear objective/motive/dream does the following 5 things:
1. It establishes something you want to achieve that is MORE important to you than your current state of being.
Example: "Jamie’s dream is to lose 10kg and get stronger so that he has more energy during the day, feels confident in his skin, and can play with his kids longer"
Getting on the right page gives you a clear sense of drive of why you should make positive change.
2. Having a dream creates an emotional bond between the tasks needed to achieve your dream and your desire to perform them.
How many people do you see saying "I just need to eat better to get my dream body and level of wellness…" but they never actually do it… It’s because they don’t have an emotional bond with the tasks needed to achieve their dream, so they simply don’t do it.
Everything we do is related to emotions… Having them work with you instead of against you is key.
3. Having a dream establishes an end goal for a program.
Let’s take Jamie as an example again. For Jamie to achieve his dream, he’ll need to make the diet, lifestyle, and movement changes necessary to get there.
This would include, learning how to eat right for his unique needs, moving his body in specific ways to stimulate fat loss, and an energising movement program to experience more energy and less fatigue. All of which would turn his dream of losing 10kg, having more energy, being more confident, and having the ability to play with his kids longer, a reality.
(Appropriate guidance is very useful for this step.)
4. Having a dream creates quicker and smoother results!
A labor of love is so much easier to do than a labor without love. Think about how tiring and annoying it is to do something that you don’t want to do… Compared to something you know will lead to greater happiness, fun, and excitement!
There is so much science behind how getting a clear positive motive for a task drastically changes your ability to do it with more success.
5. Having a dream creates certainty in an uncertain world.
Being clear on your dream gives you much greater clarity on what you need to do to avoid living life with uncertainty.
- Establish a dream
- Formulate a plan to achieve it
- Get the right information needed to execute the plan effectively
- Do you need help and guidance?
- Do the work
- Achieve the dream
If you skip any of those 5 steps leading to number 6… you are living with uncertainty and your dream is more than likely to not be realised.
You can’t effectively eat right, move right, or rest right, if you don’t have a specific motive or dream that will contribute to your happiness.
The science of behavioural change is all about this. You need something that you want more than your current predicament in order to make the change. This all starts with the question:
What’s Your Dream?
Your dream is personal to you and gives you direction as to why you’re going to start eating differently or exercising or resting. The dream qualifies you for success.
Your dream could be anything from wanting to get out of pain so that you can play football with your friends, or could be fitter and have better posture so that you can play your music longer and better, or it could simply be to have more energy so you can play with your kids and follow them around all day.
Without a dream or motive, the process of change is going to be much harder, and can feel near on impossible. That is why Dream Direction is Pillar of Health number 5!
