Are You Chasing Your True Dreams?

Sometimes we focus with all our strength on achieving a goal, a dream, thinking that its achievement will make us happy. We really believe it, we feel that we need it and we fight for it with all our effort. However, when we achieve these dreams, many times we continue to feel bad, empty and dissatisfied.

This happens because the wants and desires of our true self remain unsatisfied. In reality, the hard-won goals weren’t the ones our deepest selves needed to accomplish. They were delusional false desires induced by our insane patterns, carried over from our past.

The real crux of the matter is not then in knowing if we can fulfill our wishes (we already know that with the right motivation this is almost always possible) but in discerning if the dreams we are pursuing are really ours. Perhaps they are nothing more than the fruit of our fears and / or our negative patterns. How do you know?

Calibrate the compass of dreams

The power of the human mind is immense. Well focused, it can help us overcome great obstacles in our lives to achieve, however complex, many of our goals. Of course, we must make the mind focus on achieving the goals that are really going to make us happy.

Longings such as “to be accepted by others”, “to earn more money than anyone in my family” or “that my husband does not separate from me”, are real dreams that many people pursue but, from a psychological point of view, they are far from to be healthy goals.

Perhaps, for a time, these false dreams provide a momentary relief from anguish. However, in the long run, they are never the source of your happiness.

A continuous discomfort can be a sign that our compass is not calibrated and pushes us to desire things that have nothing to do with us, with our authentic self.

In order to connect with what we really want, we must first free ourselves of our shortcomings. To do so, we must understand where they come from and the reasons why they wield so much power over us. Only then will we be completely free and can we focus and strive for a real goal that helps us to be happier and more connected with ourselves.

If we are really in tune with our authentic desires, we will see that the blocks disappear and that everything begins to move in the right direction.

Clara’s case and her insane goal

Clara came to my office to heal her relationship as a couple. She had a very jealous boyfriend who had forbidden her to talk to other boys. He was watching her cell phone and had even forced her to delete her old friends from her contacts.

She had endured her boyfriend’s jealousy without giving it much thought. At the beginning of their relationship he did not interpret it as something negative: he saw it more as a proof of his love for her. She thought he was taking care of her.

Little by little, the situation became untenable. When Clara started to protest, the boyfriend got angry and threatened to leave her. Faced with the warning from her partner, the young woman felt a terrible fear of being left alone, so she used all the means at her disposal to “fix” the relationship.

As we can see, Clara was immersed in a toxic relationship with a sickly jealous man who controlled her and restricted her freedom. Although I did not see it.

The fear of being left alone prevented her from seeing clearly and made her want something totally toxic for her: to keep her relationship with her partner alive.

We began to work with therapy his fear of loneliness, which came from his childhood. Since she was very little, when she was not even five years old, her father and mother left her many nights alone to go out for drinks. The little girl spent those nights terrified. As an adult, Clara carried a deep feeling of helplessness and loneliness.

In her therapeutic process, Clara began to gain confidence in herself and in her abilities. He was increasingly able to get a job, earn his own money, make his own decisions and understand loneliness from another point of view. The loneliness of an adult and independent woman is not the same as the helplessness of an abandoned girl.

She was also seeing the relationship with her boyfriend with different eyes. The more connected she was to herself, the more she realized how toxic this couple was to her. It no longer seemed such a good idea to fight for that relationship.

As the fear of being alone disappeared, Clara realized that her desire to be with her boyfriend was not an authentic desire, but was based on her own insecurities. When she was able to connect with herself and her true desires, it was she who decided to end that relationship and get away from all the toxic people around her.