The first post of the new year and it’s inspired by speaking on Jennifer Louden’s Comfort Cafe on Sunday morning.

Statistics tell us that 23% of us will give up on our New Year’s resolutions by the end of this week and 45% by the end of the month.  It’s a sad truth and it’s fueled by the unrealistic expectation that change is instant and that goals come with immediate rewards.  How I wish that was true!  But, it’s not.  So, to really create lasting change, we need to nourish our dreams for this new year.  Just as we have to nourish a garden to see the harvest or nourish a child for years before we see the adult outcome of their upbringing, dreams need your care.  Here are three areas to focus your care on.

TAKE CARE OF: Your “Reckoning*”

By “reckoning”, I mean your thinking.  Wrestling with your own monkey mind is half the battle of nourishing your dreams. Your thoughts need to be watering your garden, not singeing it with poisonous gases!

The bottom-line tool that I use myself for keeping my mind at a high-energy level of thought is something I learned from studying A Course in Miracles years ago.   In a nutshell, the course says there are only two thoughts, FEAR or LOVE.  We are either thinking thoughts based in fear or thoughts based in love.  ” I am not good enough.” “I’ll never make that kind of money.” “I can’t because of the economy.” “What if I fail?” “Why bother? it never works anyway.” Those, would be fear-based thoughts.

Love-based thoughts sound like:  ” I know I’m worth it.” “The times may be bad, but I can beat the odds.” “I know what I have to offer.” “I am willing to succeed.”

The hardest part is when you are working hard to change your mind and you still do not see better results.  Carl Sagan once said:”The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” What that means is that just because you do not see evidence that your new mindset is working, it does not necessarily mean that it is, indeed, not at work on creating a result you haven’t seen yet.  Ooo. That is hard to grasp and even harder to accept but I can attest to it.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that one of my children endured a seizure disorder that latest four years. In the two years before it stopped, my son’s symptoms were getting worse and worse and every new strategy we tried through medication, diet, alternative remedies, bodywork, only seemed to help marginally at first and then not at all.  At times, I felt hopeless.  I lost many nights of sleep wondering what his life would be like and if we would ever find something that could help him. In the absence of evidence, I saw no way out.  Now that we are almost a year away from our last seizure (HALLELUJAH!), I can attest to “the absence of evidence” not being the ‘evidence of absence’.  In retrospect, I truly believe that everything we did to help him did aide in ending his seizures.  We did not have logical evidence immediately, but I think that just because we did not see immediate results, did not mean that what we did was not having a positive effect.  And even though I suffered along the way, I never gave up. I fed the dream of my son being seizure free everyday. He and I even chanted “I am seizure-free” every night before he went to sleep and any time he had to undergo a procedure, we did the chant (and the dance that goes with it)

Nourishing our dreams requires the same care, even in the absence of evidence.  (In the name of transparency, I am working on this myself!)

TAKE CARE OF:  Your DOING

To nourish our dreams we have to take action towards them.  That’s obvious.  Less obvious, though may be what kind of action to take. What kind of action are you taking?  Are you busy all the time?  Crossing things off your list and being efficient?  Maybe so, but are you being effective? Is anything happening because of the action you are taking?   Closing sales, marketing by doing the scary stuff like talking to people (instead of avoidance techniques like sending a flyer) or bypassing your comfort zone to approach someone who can make a difference to your career,  are all examples of effective action.  Nourishing your dreams means taking action that matters, not just looking busy.

Also important to taking meaningful action is understanding what is motivating you.  Sometimes, we are not even aware of what drives us.  If it is a healthy drive, we will feel inspired and stay buoyed.  If it’s a less healthy driver or motivator, it may be keeping you from what you most want and you don’t even know it.  For example, being motivated by not wanting to be like your mother or to overcome your upbringing or prove that teacher who never believed in you  was a fool, may all work for us for a while, but at some point, we will outgrow these motivators and find ourselves wondering why we’ve lost our mojo.  If you are struggling and easily discouraged, check inside to what is making you go after that dream in the first place.  Do you like what is motivating you?  If it feels good, keep it. If it doesn’t choose a new motivation.  One that fires you up will keep your dreams, thoughts and actions burning brighter.

TAKE CARE OF: YOUR BEING

You inner being, your spirit, needs to be in alignment with everything else going on above your neck.  What you are thinking and then respectively, doing, needs to be aligned with your innermost rhythm in order to truly nourish what you are creating.  That means honoring your intuition and the deepest truth about what you want and feel.  Are you respecting the inklings that are seeking expression or are  you a split personality? —-Wanting one thing but doing another because it makes more worldly sense?  Is there a difference between what you truly want and what you really expect?

The most earthly way I know to ground your inner life in the possibility that you want your outer life to reflect is to align with Gratitude.  If you can embrace it and be grateful for all you have, even if it’s not perfect right now, it will be like greasing the palm of the universe when it comes to getting results.  As I’ve learned from one of my mentors, the energy that is manifest while being in harmony with the universe through gratitude makes you connected to all things—–a modern day mystic—-which allows you the understanding of the power you have to be a creator in your own life.

Nourishing your dreams take great awareness and care.  You deserve that level of care. So do your dreams. So do all of us waiting to receive what you have to share.

Make it a great 2010.

*The Reckoning, The Doing, The Being are concepts from “Living Your Best Life” by yours truly.

For the latest ways I offer to support your dreams: http://www.laurabermanfortgang.com