The Ultimate Dream Refresh
This one is for the gal who has a dream gone a little silent. This is assuming the idea is worth refreshing, it's something you want to keep moving forward (more on this coming soon), and you just need new inspiration to keep going. Maybe you have lost momentum and you’re trying to find a new way forward. I really believe that catching new inspiration starts with information gathering and turning an idea around until you see it from a new angle. I hope a few of these practices might be the wind in your sails to do just that!
Inventory the people you follow - are you following inspiring accounts? Are you looking at things that are filling you up, leaving you hopeful and excited to dream? How can you find accounts that create additional value for you? On the contrary, could it be possible to mute some accounts that are draining? May we commit to spring-cleaning our follows!
Research places/people doing what you want to be doing. Get really curious. Send them an email. Listen to their podcast. Poke around their website. See if they are on LinkedIn. Find out if there is a niche networking event. Schedule a tour. Information gathering in a new way than your norm helps find the other angles to your dream.
Used book store topic hunt - If you are information gathering, going to a used book store (the bigger the better IMO) might be helpful. If you can find a section of books that might be able to speak to your niche you might find an angle to run with that you hadn’t thought of before. I did this specifically when I was considering writing a book for teen moms. I went through the parenting aisle to see what books were already out there and if I agreed with their messaging. I realized a lot of books in that category were written for single moms who were in that stage of life due to death or divorce and not from an unexpected pregnancy. These books talked a lot about money and stability which was a different and necessary angle to the conversation around single parenting whereas I was thinking more about how to support church leaders when unexpected pregnancies occurred in their churches and youth ministries.
Google form your friends (or your ideal audience). Get specific questions in front of specific people. Make a google form and send it out. Collecting valuable data and getting instant feedback might spark interest in you again. Also, even the very act of writing out questions as if you are going to be giving them to real people might jog some intrigue.
Pretend Podcast - Record a voice memo explaining your idea, your dream, and/or your current roadblock as if you’re being interviewed on a podcast. Again, putting the wind back in your sails is all about getting at the stalemate from a different angle. I also like to do this with baby ideas. I will talk about it in a voice memo and send it to a girlfriend who I trust to speak into the idea even in its infancy.
Make a list - If you have read any number of blogs that I have published at this point, you know I basically write in long form list making LOL! I would encourage you to make your own list of ways you get inspired in general. Is it when you walk around Trader Joe’s? Do you feel it strike after a run? Maybe over a call with your bestie? Maybe you feel inspired by a journal and extra time to process. Maybe you feel inspired after your house is clean. Whatever it is, figure out specifically what generally inspires you and then give yourself lots of permission to do just that.
Case Study:
You’re a gal applying to grad school for counseling and also passionate about writing every once in a while and maybe inspired to do some community initiative work. Your pain point is not feeling professionally inspired while you wait for the semester to start. Maybe you’re really intrigued by a specific section of counseling. As you wait for classes to gear up, you find a podcast from a counselor that speaks into specific research that you find interesting. The more you listen to this podcast on your drives home from work, you start researching their podcast guests and find other platforms to gather information about specific counseling methods applied to the population you want to serve. This feels like professional wind in your sails you needed at a very low-stakes level. As you register for classes you notice there is room for internships and you wonder if you could get a head start on looking up places that might be interesting even if you decide in 3 months to go in an entirely different direction. You decide to look up nonprofits and other agencies in your community. You notice there is a reading and writing literacy program through your school district’s local library over the summer. You know this doesn’t have much to do with counseling but it is great exposure to people and fits in with your love for writing - maybe this would be a breath of fresh air? You sign up to go to their volunteer training night because at bare-minimum you’d be getting more information. While you’re there you meet a teacher who is on summer break and you really like her vibe. You exchange social handles and you notice she shares inspiring content on her IG Story and you start following some of those accounts. Even though you and the teacher don’t stay besties, you appreciate the exposure to other kinds of media content in your feed and you feel a little more confident signing into the first zoom call of your new grad school semester after all the productive and inspiring waiting that you did.
I hope you know that your dreams are way too important to let them stay stale. At this point I also hope you have a couple ideas on how to gather information to keep you going and also some new ways of finding angles to approach your dream in a new way. I am cheering for you. Your dreams matter!
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