The Importance of Sharing Your Dreams

Dreaming can be a powerful tool to create energy needed to spark change and ignite one’s passion.Don’t Hide Your Dreams illustrates the importance of sharing our dreams. It is no wonder why Dreaming is such an important phase in the Appreciative Inquiry process. From my experience facilitating AI sessions, the dream phase (the visual image specifically) is where people become most alive and engaged. The energy that is generated in this phase is contagious for all, including the facilitators.

What I enjoyed most from that article was the professor’s activity – asking each student to come up and share what their dream is for when they grow up. I valued this exercise because it disrupted the normal dialogue we would normally expect to see/experience in school. We have been taught from an early age that school is a place where we listen, not speak. Like the author wrote, the professor’s exercise was an “unexpected request”.

This article also reaffirms that we are all students (life-long learners, I hope) and we can always pursue new dreams and opportunities as they present themselves, regardless of age, status, or position. Life is not meant to be static, but requires us to remain fluid. Living Appreciatively allows us to modify our dreams when necessary and celebrate milestones along the way.

I’ll end with a quote from the article: “Dreams are part of our life’s narrative. The possibilities that sharing our dreams with trusted friends creates is probably one of the most exciting things to go through.”