Dreaming and Scheming

Posted by Katherine Brown | No Comment

“Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find a way that is going to be interesting.”

Some people are natural coaches. If this quote is anything to go by, Katherine Hepburn was one of them.

A natural coach is someone who can help you dream and scheme. In other words: they encourage you to be bold in identifying your dream, and utterly practical about its manifestation.

Many people, and coaches, have one of these qualities, but not the other. They may be able to help you dream your impossible dream, but can they help you come up with a pragmatic plan?

Others are so stuck in the here and now that they find it hard to see anything beyond it. A natural coach has both vision and a firm grasp of reality.

These are the people who make their own, and others, dreams come true.

I was called a sergeant major in a recent magazine feature. I’ll explain why and you can make up your own mind. I coached a lady for the feature, who had been writing stories since she was nine.

She is now in her thirties, and keen to get something published and fulfil her dream of being a novelist. My job was to encourage her to believe in the dream and come up with a scheme to make it happen.

She sent me an example of her writing, which I thought terrific and offered to pass on to my editor for her professional advice. So far, so great. Here’s where the reality kicks in – sending copy to an editor with spelling mistakes is an absolute no-no. It’s just not done. It’s out and out sabotage.

I pointed this out to her, and that she really needed to: get a computer with spell-check; learn to spell; or, find someone who could. And, I suspect, this dose of reality, is what made me a member of the armed forces! As the Yanks say, go figure.

Your mission, should you wish to be a resource to others, is to embed and demonstrate this approach in yourself.

Your first challenge is your own life: to make it as interesting as possible – whether you have to support yourself or have independent means. An inheritance or rich spouse does not guarantee an interesting life!

Here are a few questions to get you dreamin ‘n schemin!

• How interesting is my life on a scale of 0-10?
• What three changes would make it more interesting?
• Which one of these changes would have the greatest overall impact?
• What do I need to do to begin to make this happen?
• What am I willing to do about it today (preferably right now)?