I move beneath it’s wake – feeling the waves going in and around me. I know then that the ocean is my dreams and is coming for me again. It is going to change me, and I must be prepared for the undertaking on my body. I turn and see the long lasting horizon in front of me and a large hill in the distance. It forms into a wave, with a beautiful white cap and I know it’s going to swallow my body whole. As the wave rolls towards me I pray it doesn’t hurt. When it finally reaches me I squeeze my eyes tight and hold my breath hoping that this gasp is going to last me long enough.

And then I feel the cool water enveloping me and surprisingly it doesn’t hurt – it’s soft like velvet and silky smooth. I feel my skin become one with the ocean – tossed and turned, changed, refined. I go through rough storms, and starry nights. I feel myself becoming more in-tune with the ocean, my dreams, than when I left the shores of beautiful sand and mountain coast line.

The storms come as I wrestle with my dreams, the desires of my heart. The ocean and I quarrel over what I want and what it wants. I’m thrown against coral and rocks, and I know eventually there is no point in fighting, it’s going to have it’s way with me anyway – it’s showing me what I was born to do.

In the middle the unknown, when I’m looking at the bright blue sky seeing an empty horizon all around me, I wonder, where is this going to take me. There is no direction, no sign, no one saying ‘This is it’.

I feel exhausted and tired from fighting. I want to give up and I wonder what is the point of becoming the person I was destined to be. And then the ocean swallows me whole and I am pulled under again. Further and further the pressure becomes too hard to bare on my lungs and my tiny body – it’s breaking me down.

Suddenly it spits me up and says swim, swim for all it’s worth. Swim hard, swim fast. Swim no matter what is below or above. What is on the horizon or not. You move your legs, your arms, and you use your head and heart!

And so I do. It’s dark, the stars only guiding my way. I have no other indication other than I swim straight. I do not know where or how long it will take but I know I have no other choice but to swim. Even when I’m tired, more tired than when I was fighting with the ocean I keep moving. Forward is my destination.

Every once in awhile I feel my dream come along and build a wave for me to ride on for awhile, to carry me when my strength is gone. It is my dreams moving me forward towards my goals and the desires of my heart. As I keep moving my skin becomes chapped and sunburned – but how could I reach my destination without battle wounds showing how hard I worked?

Somehow I end up on the shore, tiny bubbles of air on top of me, and hands full of sand. I have a chance to breathe, to look at the sky and the coastline and think – wow the world is in front of me, it’s beautiful and it’s breath taking! I feel blessed to live and these wounds and battle scars that I have from wrestling with my dreams, they tell me I have made it, here I am!

The beginning of a new year, a time to restart the list of goals yet to be achieved – a time for some people to make a new person out of themselves. I am not one of those people, I don’t want a new me, I like me.  I am a constantly making new goals for my life throughout the year  so no thanks to New Year’s Resolutions. However, one thing that I am constantly refining is how I want to feel. I realized that while writing some goals during 2012 that throughout my sentences was more about how I wanted to feel about the situation more than the situation it self.

Going through some past journal entries I came across this one from just a couple of months ago about what my life will look like at the end of 2013 and right there in the middle of traveling to far off lands and enjoying exciting dinners I wrote this:

I feel valued: because I’m considered an expert, my ideas are taken seriously, I am able to motivate and inspire them that they’ll create exceptional outcomes in business and life, and I share and communicate to others and feel valued and appreciated.

I feel intellectual: I understand the creative process but also the the need to run a tight ship in a business setting. I am able to recommend products, services, and programs that will streamline and make them more efficient. 

Isn’t that powerful?!

I then understood that the feelings dictate so much more than the goal it self – it means it can be applied to everything I do in my life – once I know how I want to feel. I can align everything up to whether my actions will bring me closer to the feelings I desire!

When December 31, 2013 rolls around, have you thought about how you want to feel? Do you want to feel happy, accomplished, recognized, traveled, loved, settled, on-track? Take some time this week and really think about how you want to feel, it will truly change the way you life this year!

What if, you pursued your inner most fantasies with unabashed passion? Doesn’t just the thought of it raise the hair on the back of your neck or a fluttering tightness in your stomach because your heart is screaming, why not?! Why not pursue your inner most desires, the desires that are attached to your heart strings, and pursue them with every ounce of devotion you can muster.

Society has this formula for life: childhood filled with imagination, education where they strip you of your imagination and fill it with only academics, graduate from said education, go to more education, and more and more, get a job, settle, find a relationship that stirs you, get married, have children, retire, have grandchildren, and then pass on.

But imagine, if you did something different. You decided you didn’t want the status quo and you decided to fill your life with more than settling and a relationship that stirs you. You want a life filled with beautiful moments and adventures that make you weep. A relationship that did more than stirred you, it consumed you. A job that was more than good enough, it fed your soul.

Imagine:

your inner most desires.

pursued.

with passion.

What would your life look like and why aren’t your pursing it?