6

MAKE SPACE FOR YOUR DREAMS

When I left Merrill Lynch to pursue several entrepreneurial ventures (meaning that I, the sole breadwinner, stopped earning money), my family and I downsized from a six-thousand-square-foot home to a townhouse in order to conserve cash. All of our belongings had to fit into a space a quarter of the size we once had. The directive “A place for everything and everything in its place” sounded perfectly doable, but I was overwhelmed. The task felt monolithic. Rather than beginning the work, I ignored it.

A kind friend offered her help. “Let’s start by organizing the papers in your upstairs office,” she said. “We’ll take it one step at a time. We’ll do a gross sort first, then a fine sort.” With her assistance, I gradually put my papers and files in order.

Big dreams don’t intimidate me, but the smallest organizational projects are paralyzing. Perhaps it’s the opposite for you. Maybe you instinctively know how and where to store your things, and you do it with style, yet achieving a big dream feels beyond your reach. If so, what I propose is to approach your challenges and dreams one step at a time.

CREATING A PLACE AND A TIME TO DREAM

Step 1. Clear the clutter and create a space where you can dream: this space—or spot or place—can be a desk, an office, your car, or your bed.

Step 2. More importantly, create a space in your day: this space—or time—can be early in the morning, after the kids go to school, while exercising, or late at night. Children make time (or we make them make time) to do homework. We need the same discipline.

In August 2007, I wrote on my blog: “It’s been nearly eight months since I started working with Clayton Christensen (a Harvard Business School professor and architect of the framework of disruptive innovation) and his son Matt Christensen on an investment fund, but not until today have I allowed myself to believe it really will happen. The feeling came on suddenly, surprisingly. And it wasn’t because Clay and I had agreed upon my percentage ownership (we already had) or because an institutional investor expressed interest (which was the case). It was because we’d found office space, and the fund moved from something conceptual, even abstract, to something real. We now had a physical space, a little (very little) corner of the world that had the sole purpose of facilitating the launch of that fund—and one of my dreams. Thinking about that office makes me think about the special places I went to as a young girl, whether to sew, read, play the piano, or ice skate. Today, I go to my office.”

Do you have a place where you can go to dream, where you can bring forth who you are—and who you want to become?

ASKING FOR RESOURCES

In theory, clearing a space sounds easy. In reality, it’s not. When we clear a space, we are moving aside something (probably something we’re doing for someone else) to make space for our thing. And by extension, we’re asking for resources, such as physical space, time, or money. Many of us have forgotten how to do this. Fortunately, young girls have not.

For instance, when my daughter Miranda was seven, she asked if we could go see The Nutcracker together. At that moment, she seemed to want more mother-daughter time, perhaps because she was feeling that my “work time” was displacing her “mom time.” I wasn’t surprised that Miranda suggested a girls’ night out, but I was surprised by her ability to articulate so easily what she wanted. I’m not very good at stating what I want, and I don’t know many women who are. Think about it: When was the last time a woman you know (or you yourself) asked simply and directly for something, and asked without any martyrdom, manipulation, etcetera? How often do women just declare what they want (without making it a need) and ask for it forcefully?

That’s what I thought.

Our cultural ideals of femininity do not include women asking for resources, such as time, money, or even praise. When or if we do ask, we feel selfish, and it’s quite likely we’ll be looked at as being selfish.

During that Christmas there were many lovely gifts given and received in our home, but taking Miranda to see The Nutcracker, as my mother had once taken me, and hearing her ask for the outing without even a nanosecond’s worry that she would be jeopardizing her femininity was, without a doubt, among the best gifts I received.

Janika Dillon, a mother of four who also holds a master’s degree in organizational behavior, shares an incredible example of how she made space for herself.

Janika Dillon: Taking a Staycation

Since last October, our family has been planning a spring break trip to visit friends and historical sites in Pennsylvania, a trip for which I had:

1. Researched where to eat, what to see, entrance fees, best driving routes, and so on.

2. Made a neat pile of all my research and had a two-page packing and things-to-do list.

3. Gone to the library and checked out children’s books and tapes about Gettysburg, Valley Forge, and more.

4. Selected travel-friendly activities for my children and bought lots of snacks.

5. Done the laundry, packed the bags, vacuumed the car, cleared out the fridge, and cleaned the entire house.

Are you tired yet? I was. Just moments before our planned departure, I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was take a week-long road trip. I told my husband, “You know, I really don’t want to go on this trip. I just want to stay home all by myself for five days.” It was like a wish come true: he quickly agreed, as did our four kids. Within minutes they were gone, without me.

I found myself suddenly alone in a perfectly clean and quiet house. I had no desire to venture out; I just wanted to luxuriate in time by myself. I made a long list of things I wanted to do.

I telephoned my eighty-eight-year-old grandparents and we had a delightful hour-long conversation. A few minutes later, a dear friend from high school called. We spoke for two hours, our friendship never missing a beat.

I began to sort through files on my desk, finding scribbled notes on tiny scraps of paper with phone numbers. In a life focused upon my husband and four children, I had left a wake of neglected friendships and missed opportunities. I had filled my mind with so many to-do lists in the midst of mothering chaos that I had forgotten how to hear my own voice. When a quiet moment did come, I didn’t know how to use my free time because I didn’t even know what I wanted to do.

With everyone gone, I thought I would feel lonely. I figured I would listen to books on tape all day to keep me company. But I wasn’t lonely. I loved the silence and the opportunity to hear my thoughts, to wonder what I’d think up next, to wake up early, my mind spinning with so many new ideas.

One morning I woke up with a plan to improve my town’s Patriots Day celebration. Each year, our town reenacts Paul Revere’s ride, completing the event with a mini-parade, a speech from the mayor, a performance by the high school band, and lunch at a Revolutionary-era funeral home. My early-morning idea was to involve the city historical society, and the local university and other city and business organizations to sponsor several historical activity tables so children can learn more about Paul Revere and the history of our town.

It was refreshing to discover that I felt so strongly about something that I was willing to step outside of my comfort zone to make it happen. In my normal, nonrebellious, nonhermetic life, I often find myself pushing away really good ideas because I just don’t have the time to develop or implement them. Maybe this time away from the noise would allow me to set some priorities for myself, enough at least to guide me until the next time I could take a “break.”

American folklorist and mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote:

You must have a room, or certain hour of the day or so, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

As I carried on coherent conversations with my long-lost friends, many were at first shocked that I would stay home without my husband and children as I did. But then, after realizing what I had achieved, they’d enthusiastically say, “Oh, that’s exactly what I want to do!”

I’m having a perfect staycation. I highly recommend you take one, as well.

Janika wisely recognized that she needed time and space to reconnect with herself in order to find her dreams, and she was brave enough to ask for the resources she needed. Kudos to her husband and children for giving her what she most needed!

In addition to making time and space to dream, some dreams may also require that we spend money. Most of us will sacrifice anything for our children’s happiness, but asking for financial resources for our own dreams can feel as if we’re asking for the moon. This is terribly difficult for me as well, which is probably one of the reasons I work to earn money. (If I make money, I don’t have to ask for money.) So let’s not think about asking for money. For now, let’s just think about what it means when we spend money.

A DOWN PAYMENT ON OUR DREAMS

Consider for a moment Charles Dickens’ assertion, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Spend less than we earn. I couldn’t agree more. But once we’ve achieved this basic principle of money management, then what? How do we spend our money? Does how we spend mirror how we see the world? Do our spending habits enable our dreams?

When we spend money to house, feed, clothe, educate, and play with our children, aren’t we making a down payment on their happiness, their identity, and ideally our shared desires to have a close-knit family? What about money spent on savings and investment? When we participate in philanthropic pursuits, aren’t we casting a vote for a world where we take care of our own and others? There are so many great ways to spend our money. But, I wonder: Is there any room in our budget to finance our individual dreams?

As women, we may feel we don’t have the money—or time or permission—to put toward our dream. But keep in mind that Psyche didn’t need to shear the rams and obtain all the fleece. She needed only a little, a bit that the rams had snagged on the brambles. She could be heroic with just a little bit of fleece. You can too, with just a little bit of time, a little bit of money. Think of the money as a down payment on your dream.

If right about now you have that pit-in-the-stomach feeling and you’re thinking, “I can’t possibly ask for time, or space, or money for myself,” then consider morning sickness. One theory is that when a fetus starts to grow, a woman’s body issues an “intruder” alert and launches an attack, just as it would with germs, viruses, even a transplanted organ. Morning sickness can be unendurable for a time. But when we finally cradle our newborn baby, those months of sickness seem a small price to pay. Making space for a new piece of ourselves may feel profoundly discomfiting, but isn’t it also true that, once we give birth, we can become more ourselves than ever?

In the 1950s, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the accomplished writer and poet, wrote in her acclaimed book Gift from the Sea:

If women were convinced that a day off or an hour of solitude was a reasonable ambition, they would find a way of attaining it. As it is, they feel so unjustified in their demand that they rarely make the attempt. One has only to look at those women who actually have the economic means or the time and energy for solitude yet do not use it, to realize that the problem is not solely economic. It is more a question of inner convictions than of outer pressures, though, of course, the outer pressures are there and make it more difficult. . . . How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude . . . and has to apologize for it.

Can you relate to what she’s saying? Lindbergh continues, “When one is alone, it is among the most important times in one’s life. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. Women need solitude to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.”

When we make time, find space for, and invest in our dreams, we make an investment in the true essence of ourselves. On the surface, we may each be asking for what we want—but there will be a tremendous return on investment for our loved ones as well.

BRINGING FORTH WHAT YOU MIGHT BE . . .

Paraphrasing Joseph Campbell, you must claim a space and a time to discover what you are and who you might be.

Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.

—Anna Lappe, author and activist

To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.

—Søren Kierkegaard, nineteenth-century Danish philosopher