Be Delusional, Thank Me Later
What if it all works out? What if your wildest dream manifested into reality? What if you could do whatever you wanted to do in this life?
I used to call myself a realist. I’d often discount questions like these as romantic notions. It was important to me that I grounded myself in what I thought I knew to be true. Dreams and imaginations were childish to me. The glass-half-full mantra seemed naive. As a result, unsurprisingly, a dark storm cloud followed my every move.
After years of holding onto that limiting mindset, I finally broke through the glass ceiling of doubt. In retrospect, I see the restrictions I was putting on myself and how unknowingly I was holding myself back. Reality is what you make of it and I was making mine...boring. So, at the beginning of 2021, I vowed to be more imaginative.
At the time, I was working a slow-paced corporate job at Walmart E-Commerce. I was depleted, tired, frustrated, and going through the motions of life. But, I was also committed to shifting my mindset. I started by writing in my journal. For five minutes each morning, I let my mind wander about my dream life and whatever came to mind, I jotted down.
Once that practice became natural, I started to share the dreams I wrote with Luke. I was shy at first about expressing what I wrote. To my surprise, Luke loved hearing what I was imagining for myself. He never said never. In fact, often he pushed me to dream even bigger.
At one point my dream was to become a freelance writer. Then it was a full-time blogger and influencer. Then it was a podcast host. Then it was a musician. Then it was a stay-at-home mom. It changed all the time but the point wasn’t to identify the “what,” at least not yet. It was to get into the habit of being delusional when it came to my dreams.
It became easier and easier to see myself as more than I was. With each new dream, I imagined myself as that vision. Take a freelancer as an example. I asked myself, what would a creative freelancer do each morning? What would they wear, eat, talk about, say? And then I acted like that. I was trying on identities like clothes in a thrift store — choosing well-worn items that I admired to see how they looked on me.
Eventually, I found what looked and felt best and I discovered my next dream job — working at TikTok. I networked, applied, and guess what? I got the job. It was amazing to see what I could accomplish if I just believed in myself.
I could go on and on about how effective it is to strip away the chains of reality; how by giving yourself the room to play, you can dream up a beautiful life and take steps to go after it. All it takes is a healthy dose of delusion. I’m not alone in this mindset. There are plenty of people who also talk about how powerful it is to visualize life as you want it, not as it is — Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey, and Ariana Grande to name a few.
A recent example popped up in my FYP of Austin Butler, who went on Jimmy Fallon this week to talk about how he prepared to play Elvis Presley in the 2022 biopic. Before even meeting the director, Baz Luhrmann, Austin acted as if he already had the role. He worked with a movement coach, vocal coach, dialect coach, and others as soon as he heard there was an Elvis movie being made. Not only did he get the role, he also went on to win a Golden Globe for his portrayal and recently, he was nominated for an Oscar as well. Austin chalks it up to being delusional.
There is so much more that I want to achieve in life. Even the farfetched dreams that pop into my head or weigh heavy on my heart I now see as possible. Dreaming is a beautiful thing and, it can help move you forward in life. If you want a place to start, use our Prompts section to see weekly journal prompts.
