The column “Find Your Buried Treasure” appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on March 24, 2011.

At a workshop I attended recently, I met a woman who’s a Dream Coach. Not the kind of Dream Coach I am, who helps people work toward achieving their dreams, but the kind who helps people understand and learn from the dreams they have while they’re sleeping.

This is a subject I have always found fascinating, and we had a lot to talk about when we went to lunch together on the first day of the workshop. Not surprisingly, we discovered that we had a lot of beliefs and goals in common, although the focus of what each of us does is as different, literally, as night and day.

By the time the workshop was over, we had decided to do a teleseminar together, and we’ve been preparing for it ever since.

Although I’ve taken part in teleseminars before – where a conference-call format is used for training or teaching by phone – I’ve never hosted or co-hosted one. Fortunately my partner, Carol, has done this before and is very helpful, encouraging, and reassuring. And even though I’ve had a bit of a learning curve to handle in addition to preparing the content of the teleseminar, the whole process is interesting and exciting. But also a bit scary – especially since we set the date of the event to be sooner rather than later. It’s now just a few weeks away. And as I’ve been preparing for it, I’ve had to face and conquer a number of fears, the kind that have often stopped me in the past from doing things that I really wanted to do.

I’ve been able to handle and process the fears as they’ve popped up, because my Dream Coach training has taught me that most of our fears fall into two categories, those that are limiting beliefs – we tell ourselves we’re too old or young, too slow or stupid, or that we don’t have enough time, skills, money, knowledge or opportunity – and those that simply require a strategy in order to overcome whatever obstacles we’re facing. The strategy includes a plan of action, with specific steps to follow that will lead to success in whatever it is we want to accomplish.

It helps to have someone else on our side – someone who’s already done what we’re trying to do and is willing to help or teach us, someone who can serve as our cheerleader and give us support and encouragement when we start to falter or when doubts start to creep in, and someone who is there to recognize and remind us of the value or importance of what we’re trying to do. These can all be the same person, or they can be separate individuals, but they make up our own personal Dream Team, no matter what it is we’re trying to accomplish.

What Carol and I are trying to accomplish is to create a program that will teach people how to use the dreams they have when they’re sound asleep to help them achieve the dreams they are pursuing while they’re wide awake. And one of the dreams I am pursuing in the process is to become confident and comfortable with a new way of teaching and reaching people. And to conquer the fears that have kept me from doing so, long before now.

If you’d like more information about the teleseminar, feel free to email [email protected]. And no matter what dreams you have – inside of you or out in front of you – I hope that, night and day, you are on your way to achieving them.

CHANHASSEN VILLAGER
3/24/11
© Betty Liedtke, 2011