Welcome to episode #199 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast. Sometimes our dreams feel far off, and that they are too big. Other times, it feels like we’ve lost the capacity to dream. Life feels so tiring and like we don’t have the time to dream beyond today. If you’re in either of these camps, this is not a problem. Today’s podcast will break down why you need to start dreaming again.

It’s been 2 years since I picked up surfing and this week Jay (my partner) and I attended a week-long surf camp. I’ll tell you more about how it went, but the real gold in this story is how it all started. It was about 6 years ago, when I was in the Catskills hiking with Jay that I asked him a question about what kind of life he would have if he got dropped down on this planet again and didn’t have any ties to anything, anyone and anywhere. He said he’d be a surfer somewhere. To my surprise, that was the same answer I had – that I hadn’t shared with him. Not premeditated, but just a thought of how different that lifestyle is to the one we had. Salty skin and hair, less stuff, more nature.

We don’t live near a beach. We hadn’t even really surfed before. I may have taken one lesson in Brazil on a business school trip years ago, but this definitely wasn’t our life. Fast forward 4 years later I am leading a retreat in Costa Rica and the week after, Jay and our girls meet me and we hang out for another week. We picked this house from Airbnb based on the design, not even really knowing much about where it was – but it ended up being in one of the top surf spots in Costa Rica. We decided to take a lesson and I remember that one moment where I was hooked. I looked over to the right after I just finished “riding” a wave and saw the mist coming up over the water, the mountains just beyond the beach and that blue sky everywhere. I saw why people love this thing called surfing. Jay was just as hooked. We took another lesson that week, and then decided to come back to the same place for 4 weeks that summer.

There was so much fun anticipation. We would get to stay near the water for a month, pick up a little more surfing and just have some fun in the water. Beginners at it but we didn’t mind.

The next summer, we ended up at another beach – this time off the coast of Mexico and took a couple more lessons. Then this past Spiritual Achiever retreat happened to be at the top surfing destination in Mexico, which was unplanned because I was picking it based off the villa. Yet when I shared the location with Jay, he was the one who told me, you know that’s one of the top surf spots in the world. So we tagged a trip onto the retreat and did a little more surfing there.

Now, a month later, we’re taking a week-long surf camp – and also have another summer trip planned where we happen to be in some pretty fun surfing destinations, and I’m looking around thinking – we’re suddenly these surfing people. 

This is the power of dreaming. Unrealistic yet open-minded dreaming. We don’t do this enough.

We get bogged down in the day-to-day life to-do lists. We stay safe. We fear rocking the boat so much that we forget about the things that we are interested in and who we are if we didn’t have to be anyone to anyone.

Yet, when that happens, our lives stop moving with the arc of our dreams. We start living a life based on all the things that we’ve already done. We don’t ask as many questions and we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to feel like beginners again. 

If you have that tendency to stop big ideas and dreams from coming forward in your mind, you’re not alone. Every day, I talk to people who tell me about ideas they feel are not worth sharing. They feel almost embarrassed that they have dreams or things that they are thinking about and haven’t done. They feel like they’re the only ones that have stopped doing the things they’ve dreamed about.

This is where coaching and being in community with people who are pushing the boundaries of what their current minds, bodies and spirits are capable of come into play.

I help people make their dream lives, their real lives through practical and spiritual work. 

Practical strategies that help you finally execute, start and finish the things that are open decision loops holding onto vast amounts of energy in your brain. Should I switch jobs? When? Should I go back to school? Should I take a break? Should I help my partner with their big decisions? Should I tell my kids what I really think?

Spiritual work that helps you heal from the condition of feeling like you’re never quite happy or fully yourself. This inner work guides how light you feel moving through the world. How in congruence you are between what you do, what you say and what you believe. To be someone that fully trusts themselves and is fully trusted by the people around them. To really leave things better than they found them, without resentment or burning themselves out.

When you start to dream again and use these strategies, your life starts to open up. You are able to move through the hard things versus where you might feel today, where the hard things feel constant, overwhelming and like they just never end.

There is a life of feeling constantly exhausted and that things are never enough, or a life where you start dreaming and living the dream.

If you want to choose the latter, you’ll want to watch my free training on how to Stand Out and Lead, using spiritual, high-performance strategies. You can access the training at https://may-empson.mykajabi.com/stand-out-and-lead.

You can then apply to join my Spiritual Achiever® program, where you’re going to create your next chapter with spiritual and high-performance strategies to achieve time and financial freedom using my proven method. It’s risk-free. You either start seeing results within your first month or I give you your money back. Schedule your call HERE. We’ll see you inside.

Want to know more about what happens when you join?

1. When you join Spiritual Achiever® Coaching you’ll be supported for a full year: Career Revelation Academy: A 5-step career change process (if you have a job you want to stay in, I’ll show you how to love it even more) that can launch you into your next career chapter in 30 days.
2. 2x/month group training and coaching on Spirituality, Achievement, Earth Energy and Harmony. You’ll know how to design your days for breakthroughs, create a personal brand and community, lead yourself and others through change, become more physically and mentally fit, reduce stress and reinvent what’s possible in this next chapter of your life.
3. Discover your Leadership Strengths and Branding Workshop: Increase your awareness of what makes YOU different from others and how to become even better at your genius zone.
4. Your Best Year workshop: Create your one year plan and design this next year, no matter what time of the year it is.
5. Your Next 5 Years one-day virtual retreat: Vision what’s possible 5 years from now and break out of your old routines so you can step into new habits, behaviors and routines.
6. Tickets to all in-person Spiritual Achiever retreats (discounted rates): Highly immersive and intimate gatherings where we spend time in nature, experience energy work, eat and move well – all while making big decisions and committing to what’s next for us.
7. Monthly 1:1 Coaching Sessions: To help you break through obstacles, define your individual path, and to work on both strategy and mindset.

The next step?

Schedule a consultation to get clarity on how coaching can help you on your journey.

Once you’re accepted into the program, you’ll receive a calendar invite for a 2-hour deep dive 1:1 session to map out your personal goals and your own year-long journey.

You’ll have immediate access to the Spiritual Achiever process and philosophy – how to achieve your biggest goals and reinvent your life.

You’ll have immediate access to 5 modules of Career Revelation Academy – to love your career even more and launch that next chapter of your career in 30 days.

You’ll have the calendar invites for the upcoming group calls and retreats.

If this speaks to you, I can’t wait to talk to you live: Schedule a consultation.

Reach out at www.mayempson.com/contact for more information on my Spiritual Achiever coaching program. You’ll figure out what’s next and actually go and do it. 

That’s it for this week. Have an amazing one and I’ll talk to you next time.