How to move forward when a dream ends – ponder

06 May
2018

I am writing a series of blog posts that describe what to do when a dream ends. Both of you will face this challenge at some point in your life. It is inevitable. I walk through a personal example to share the approach I used when one of my dreams died. More specifically the dream of a lifelong marriage ended when your mother and I divorced several years ago. In this situation standing still was not an option. The only healthy choice was to move on. Last week I detailed the first step which was to learn and grow. This week’s post describes the next step which is to ponder your possibilities. Identify the potential paths forward before choosing one and moving forward. The logical question that follows is what is the best way to ponder your possibilities. There are many methods available. I am sharing the one that worked for me.

Leverage the skills you know to your advantage

As both of you know I am a professional consultant. Neither one of you probably understands what I really do at work which is okay. Essentially clients hire consultants to solve their problems, especially the tough ones. I enjoy this type of work – it is challenging. I decided to use skills from work to address my own situation. Why not leverage work skills to solve a personal problem. A method we used to solve really hard client problems is called design thinking. One of my colleagues, Geoff Schaefer, taught our team this method. We were getting great results using design thinking for clients so I figured it might work well for me. I am not going to describe design thinking in detail. There are plenty of books and articles about it on the internet. I will say that it is an effective method for getting results quickly. Design thinking can be intense because it requires time and energy for success. Two things that I had in abundance.

Stanford University teaches a course in design thinking.
Stanford University teaches a course in design thinking.

Find yourself on the map – where are you?

A key component of pondering your possibilities is to find yourself on the map. In other words, where are you? Start here first, especially if you feel lost. It will be difficult to decide on the best path forward if you have no idea where you are on the map. Think about the last time you were in a big shopping mall trying to find a store. You don’t start wandering around hoping that you find the store. Instead, most people look at the mall map. The first thing I search for is the “You are here” designator. Then I identify my desired destination. Next, I consider the possible paths for getting from where I am to where I want to be. It is a simple formula. I recommend using the same technique when it comes to your life. Start by determining where you are first.

Find yourself on the map to avoid endless wandering around.
Find yourself on the map to avoid endless wandering around.

My life was a hot mess and I knew it

Determining where you are in life can be difficult. The reason is that being brutally honest with yourself is hard, especially for me. By nature, I am an eternally optimistic person. In many situations, my optimism is a good thing. Not in this case. Instead, I needed to take a hard look in the mirror. When I did, what I saw was disturbing. What reflected back scared me. There is no other way to describe it other than my life was a hot mess. Not much was going well. My marriage was over, our family was dissolving, and the divorce was about to get nasty. The time we would get to spend together was changing radically. My finances were a disaster. I did not have any money to pay for a good divorce lawyer, nor nearly enough money saved for retirement. I owed your mother hefty alimony payments, and my monthly cash flow was negative. I needed to sell the house and car to clear my largest liabilities. Thank God I was not deep in debt. I did not have many friends, I was not in good physical shape, and was not fun to be around. To say that there was a lot of room for improvement is a major understatement.

I could afford to keep the house after the divorce.
I could not afford to keep the house after the divorce.

I still had a lot going for me

Not all was bad. There were many positive things in my life. My family stepped up. Oma, Opa, and Uncle Perry were all helpful. Many of my friends went out of their way to provide moral support. And I still had my faith. The one thing that could never be taken from me by anyone. The key component that would make all the difference in the long run as I pondered my future.

When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord;
    he brought me into a spacious place.
The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.
    What can mere mortals do to me?
The Lord is with me; he is my helper.
    I look in triumph on my enemies

Psalm 118:5-7

Use design thinking to ponder your possibilities

Now that I knew where I was on the map, next it was time to ponder the possibilities for my future. Where did I want to go next? I used a brainstorming technique from design thinking that involves writing all of your ideas on sticky notes. Get all of your ideas out of your head and on paper. The good and bad ones – the more ideas the better. Don’t overthink this step – just write them all down. After this brain dump, you analyze and organize them into some kind of structure. During this part, you eliminate the bad, stupid, and silly ideas. Flesh out the good ones until you are satisfied. Once complete you may have something that looks like the picture below. It is a picture of what I came up with. I blurred the photo to hide the details. Many of them are too personal for me to share. What I will say is that I did not have all the answers yet. Rather it was a starting point. Many answers would not come until later.

I spent a fair amount of time brainstorming ideas.
I spent a lot of time brainstorming ideas.

Capture your results for future use

I believe in writing important things down. The older I get the more I tend to forget stuff. When it comes to really important topics like your life dreams I highly recommend that you capture your results so that you can reference them later. You boys may recall that my bedroom in the townhouse I rented in Braemar had a really tall wall. It was almost absurdly large. I used this wall as my life planning canvas. I transferred the content from the brainstorming exercise onto large sticky notes that I hung on the wall. I would see them every day when I woke up and before I went to bed. I am not saying you need to mimic this technique. My personality type tends to obsess on a topic to thoroughly understand it. For example, I further refined the content and saved it as powerpoint slides like the example below. You don’t need to create slides. They work well for me. Use whatever method works for you when capturing your results.

One of several artifacts used to capture the results.
One of several artifacts used to capture the results.

Pondering your possibilities will help you move forward

When a dream ends, you must make the decision to move on. Start the journey by taking the time learn and grow. Next, ponder your possibilities. All of this probably sounds like hard work. It is. The easier path to take would be to skip the work and just wing it. Don’t do that. I skipped doing the work for years and paid the price. I ended up being in a bad place on the map – lost for years without knowing it. You can do better. Just like I am doing much better these days. My life is not perfect, but all the hard work is paying off.

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