This question left me blank last year. I wasn't spending time imagining the extent to which I could have things that I wanted. I, like many of us, was more in the "how much more can I take?" zone.
I remember noticing nice things that my attendings had during training. They usually had nice houses, usually went on vacations to nice places. But I also was very focused on how hard they worked, and how long they stayed at the end of the day.
And what I took away from it all was that the cost of having nice things was working that hard. It was therefore unfathomable to imagine nicer things or working less hard. Did not compute.
It's a lid, a limiting belief, that many of us have. We aspire to a certain level of nice things/experiences, based on what we see around us, in people like us (at least in some respect, as in same specialty). But we often don't imagine beyond that.
And it isn't simply about material stuff, or trips. It's also about how much enjoyment we experience, or how much self-care we afford ourselves in terms of time or energy.
So where is your lid? And how did you place it on yourself? Think about your experiences in life, including your ability to easily feel desirable emotions such as joy, gratitude, and playfulness. You can think about money as well, and the stuff you allow yourself to have or spend money on to live a better life (such as paying cleaners to come so that you spend more time playing or relaxing).
Is your lid working for you right now? Maybe yes.
And if not, if you feel constrained, as though there isn't room for dreams, growth, and expansion beyond your current day-to-day, what do you want to do about it? Will you commit the time to thinking about it, outlining it, talking about it? Will you go beyond and invest in yourself by hiring people to help you, such as aforementioned cleaners, a coach, a virtual assistant?
My business mentor likes to say that there is no "imagination police." That we can dream big, and imagine our lives bigger and better, and let our minds go to work on ideas to move forward.
To get started, don't focus on the "how," but simply spend some time imagining what it would be like to spend more time on yourself or with your family, or have more amazing vacations, or write a book, or any other "impossible dream" that floats through your mind. Practice seeing it, imagining it comes true, trying the idea on, the same way you might try on a coat at the store. What does it feel like to live life in that way?
It's not a pipe dream. It's really about building a mental muscle for growth and imagination beyond what you have been living. And once you can imagine it, imagining how you will feel, your brain will start to go to work imagining steps in the direction of these dreams.
Who knows where it ends, really. But the point is, it won't happen if you won't even try to fathom it for yourself.
Time to blow the lid off.
