The Dreams You Let Go

Remember what it was like to be a child with the sense that most anything was possible? When someone asked you what do you want to do when you grow up, you might have answered “astronaut” “poet” “doctor.” The compelling image of this possible you, shining in your eyes.

And then? Life. School. Maybe grades that didn’t ladder up to being a rocket scientist or a heart surgeon. Expectations. Maybe parents who discouraged you (gently and with humor but still…) from becoming a poet or an athletic coach or a teacher. People who said, “this path is not for you.” Slowly, experience by experience, your untrammeled dreams began to confront “reality.” What was and is expected of you?  What disappointments and failures were you unable to move past? It all led to a life defined by what is possible for you. A narrower life than that 8-year-old might have envisioned.

We make tradeoffs when we hit obstacles. And while doing so, we begin to construct a life that we believe we can have. As David Byrne sang so well:

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife.

Remember the next line?

And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

How you got here is what we at Renascence call The Compensating Power Principle. Every time you exercise your Winning Strategy (short definition: that structure you have created for yourself and that has created who you “are” that allows you to navigate the world in a way that allows you to survive and feel successful and whole – until it doesn’t. More on that here.) -- every time you call this deeply rooted, unconscious belief system into play, you move towards what you believe is possible for you and away from what is not possible. You strengthen your Compensating Power Principle, compensating for your belief that some opportunities, lives, careers, loves are possible for you and others are simply not. Every time you do that, you sharpen the perception that things are the way they are and you are how you are and so it shall ever be.

Science illuminates the concept further. Through the discoveries of neuroscience, we now know that the brain is not immutable, hardened for life. The concept of neuroplasticity, that the brain can change interconnections (neural pathways) and develop new skills and understandings, entire new ways of being over time works for us and against us. The neurons that fire together, wire together. I think therefore I am may have been Descartes’s foundational principle related to man’s consciousness, but it also holds true for our general state of being. If you think you are a crappy writer, you will be. If you think you always have to be in control in a situation, you will do whatever you can to make sure you are, even if it means turning away from excitement and joy and discovery.

Are you doomed to live a lesser life then? Not at all. The path towards rediscovery and reawakening of the bright young child who simply could not envision being held back, is in your relationship to your Winning Strategy. Rather than allowing it to define every interaction you have (and, once you discover yours, you will be amazed at its tenacity) your Winning Strategy becomes something you have, rather than it having you. At Renascence we work with you to uncover your Winning Strategy, establish a new relationship with it and tools for living fully into your new possibilities.

As Greg Thomas, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Owens Corning and a past participant of the Executive Reinvention Program which the Renascence Program is based on said:

“Looking back, not reinventing myself would have been like living half a life.”

What are you waiting for? Contact us at renascenceprogram@gmail.com to learn more.