What are your dreams? What are you meant for?

As quarantine kicked into high gear, I found myself in search of information outside of my usual. 

I’m an avid reader and a big believer in expanding knowledge, especially when it comes to business. But I self admit that I drift towards books about business, finance and organization. 

In an effort to become more self aware, I have been making a concerted effort to expand my horizon and dive into titles more specifically geared towards psychological principles and why we do what we do. 

One book that grabbed my attention was Lisa Sasevich’s book “Meant for More”. In theory this book is more marketing and sales based but what caught my attention was the introduction.

Her message that we are all meant for more really struck a chord.

In her intro, she recounts her mom dying of cancer at 47. At the memorial service, she overhears her mom’s coworkers discussing that while she was kind, talented, good at her job, she could have done so much more. 

She concurs with the coworkers and admits that “the light in her mom’s eyes had gone out a long time before”.  Her mother was a professional, with a good career, hardworking, empathetic, with side hustles. But she was meant for more. 

A few months before I read the Introduction for this book, my own mother had died of cancer. There was no memorial service for me to overhear her coworkers discussions as she had previously retired. But there had been years of my sister and I watching my mom’s unhappiness and lack of fulfillment in her life. 

Maybe we didn’t use the words meant for more, but what we always knew was that she wasn’t living the life she could have been. 

My mom was a professional, a nurse for 30+ years. She had been Director of Nursing, her patients and coworkers loved her. She was great at what she did. Energetic, intelligent, empathetic, the hardest worker I knew.

But being a nurse was never what she wanted to do. Couple that with a handful of unsuccessful marriages and needing to support my sister and I as a single mom and her destiny for this part of her life was written. 

The light in her eyes had left many, many years before she died.

It was a struggle for my sister and I to watch the depression set in, seeing her resigned to a life that didn’t make her happy or satisfied. 

But why? What beliefs developed during her childhood, as a woman, as a professional, as a mother that prevented her from exploring all that life had to offer?

I’m sure my mom had dreams, but something kept her from sharing them, pursuing them. Something limited her. 

I feel so passionate about this I just want to scream from the rooftops. This is it. We get one life. There is so much more, so so much more. 

I’m starting 2021 out with these questions: What are my dreams? What am I meant for? And how am I going to achieve them?

Let’s become more self aware together. We can do this.

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Guess what? I went back to college at 45. You are never too old to do what you want to do.