I Had a Dream....Where I Was Naked and Unprepared

The cliché dream where you show up to school only realize you forgot to put clothes on that day has created a major life pivot for me.

That frightening 'Naked and Afraid' scenario was still making it's way into my dream playlist

even 17 years after graduating from formal schooling. I would wake up feeling unprepared and anxious. The situation was not a representation of my past school life, but the feelings were.

This got me thinking about how I could change the scratched record of emotions without feeling regret for not giving 100% effort to my education so many years ago. I needed a 'do over' with school in order to change the script that apparently was not going anywhere until I did something about it. Whatever needs to be done is not completely clear, but I do know that the ideal end result is feeling accomplished, improved and successful when it comes to focused learning over a period of time.

That is what initially led me to make a commitment to the following action steps:

1. Wake up early every morning no matter what. This started as a consistent 4:30AM wake-up time. I would do this by reminding myself every time the alarm went off that I'm only tired for the first 10 minutes, then it gets better. It also led me to go to sleep much earlier because I was tired at night.

2. Keep moving forward, even if it's a baby step. This was for exercise (I started off just doing 3 push-ups when I woke up), education or filling my brain with positive information and working on daily organization.

3. Constantly take in information that will contribute to growth in any way. Audible has been a major pillar in being able to do this. YouTube is nice also, but when you listen to a book, it is in-depth insight into a topic. I would also write down the title of the book and the author's name every morning when I started the day. This is helpful for remembering the information when it comes up later in conversation or just for future recall.

4. Expect things to be tweaked along the way. This was added when I was about 3 months into my 4:30AM schedule and threw out my back. I couldn't move much for about 5 days. It was upsetting that it threw off my whole routine. The mental shift was very apparent. There had been 3 months of fueling my mind with great positive information and it started to come back around to help me out. "Failure" is the best way to learn, so I used this opportunity to tweak my expectations and continue with action step #2 (keep moving forward, even if it's a baby step). "Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." - Confucius

5. Love the process. There is no end result because growth is constant. The process is the education, so there had to be a change in mindset. Goals began to be about improving the process rather than one big end result.

This conscious effort started in February and it is now June. A few nights ago I had a new dream about school that was very different from my past recurring one and it's not just because I had clothes on in it.

The Dream....

There was an option to attend 5 different schools. I was looking into each one of them to see which was the best fit. One stood out as being the best in that it was the most challenging and created well-rounded students who were taught to work hard and do whatever it takes to succeed. There was a guide in my dream who told me that I could go to this school if I would like, but to not expect to do as well as the other people there because it is a very advanced education. In that moment, a strong feeling of determination came over me. I told the guide that's bullshit and I was going to not only choose that school, but also succeed in every aspect of it.

There was then a clear message that I got from my subconscious mind - the lack of focus during my formal schooling days was OK, but now I needed to create my own personal academy of life where I succeed no matter what.

So here I am. That is the inspiration behind starting this blog. I'm creating my 'Life University' and will be writing about it in this blog.

The textbooks are books I choose based on what I want/need to learn.

The curriculum is my choosing.

The grades are the amount of action taken.

The goal is to give it my all so that what I learn becomes a part of who I am and how I live.

Final note:

These blogs won't be perfect.

This "school" won't be perfect.

Life isn't perfect.

I'm not perfect.

Now that I got that out of the way, it will be a whole lot easier to take action and move forward.

Step 1: Learn how to blog!