You’re capable of a lot more than you think
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- January 15, 2024
- 335
“We also need our dreams while we are wide awake.”
—Zig Ziglar
Mental health is a lot like physical health — it needs to be maintained every day.
It is a good idea to take vitamin C during cold and flu season in order to boost our immune system. Likewise, we need to keep putting the positives into our minds to boost our attitude. Unfortunately, like with our other medications, it can be hard to remember it on a regular basis. Stacey is having me take a multivitamin. Sometimes she asks me if I have been taking it every day, and I have to confess I forget.
During the lockdown I was doing great. I have to admit it was one of the best times of my life. I felt like life had slowed down so much that I could think, and I had true peace. Then things started to get back to normal, the debate about masks heated up and let’s not talk about the debates about vaccinations. With all that going on, I wasn’t taking care of my mental health the way I should have been. I began getting depressed, having panic attacks and having a bad reaction to a depression medication. It just wasn’t a good situation.
I have been working with a counselor for about a year now. My depression is almost gone, and my anxiety level has dropped a great deal. Looking back over the last four years, somewhere along the line I just gave up. I had no drive or anything. I really did not know how I maintained this column during that time. I feel like I let all my readers down during that time, and I apologize. I also feel like the things I wrote were for me and then my readers.
With 2024 dawning, I feel like I am back, and I urge all of you to start dreaming again with me. The thing about dreams is they are personal. I like what Les Brown said, something to the effect of imagine us on our deathbeds surrounded by ghosts. They point to us and say we came to you and only you could have given us life, and now we must die with you.
Sometimes we are scared of our own dreams because they seem unrealistic, but if they seem realistic, are they even dreams to begin with? Dreams are designed to make us stretch and push ourselves beyond our limits. The Navy SEALs have a saying: “A man is capable of 10 times as much as he thinks he is.” I came out of my depression, and one of the things I want to tell you is we are capable of a lot more than we think.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, what gender you are or how much money you have. All that really matters is our willingness to pursue our God-given dreams. It doesn’t have to be an earth-shattering dream. Maybe someone is given a few months to live and they just want to live to see their granddaughter get married. That is a noble dream.
One of the beginning stages of a dream is to take one step at a time. When I begin dreaming, I read up on what I want to do, find out who I should talk to and who has done what I want to do. For the person who wants to live long enough to go to the wedding, they can eat healthy and talk to their doctor and ask what they can do to accomplish their dream. For the rest of us, there is great power in talking to people who have been where we want to go. They can break it down into a journey for us, and we can get inspired by the steps they took, get creative with what they tell us. We definitely don’t want to copy their journey; we want to make it our own.
Chew on this column for a while, and in my next column, I will discuss the most dangerous part of this journey — dream killers.