As I write this I’m in my other role of Mum. I’m waiting with my two sons while my daughter swims up and down, trying to perfect her butterfly stroke. Good luck to her I say; can’t say I’ve ever mastered it. But it’s what we do isn’t it. To give our kids the best opportunities. To make sure they are safe near water.
But I feel rotten as I’m trying to get rid of a horrible virus and at this point my mind wanders...
Instead of sweating it out at the municipal pool I’m lying on a sun lounger on a tropical island. My kids are happily playing together nearby. My husband is catching the football highlights in the pool bar while getting us a drink. I’m so content because everyone is in their happy place. The sun is recharging my batteries. I’ve earned this break through hard work and squirrelling away.
And then I wake up and it’s time to fight our way into the communal showers.
So here's my question to you - do you ever allow yourself to imagine how something that you want to happen in the future might play out?
I mean really fantasise without considering the rational or realistic outcomes and actually pretend that what you want to happen actually happens?
Yes? No way?
As a child I used to role play games of mums and dads for hours and hours with friends and even on my own with all my toys in the supporting roles. I now hear my own children doing exactly the same thing. And all they’re doing is creating a pretend world that they want to live in for a short time.
But ask a bunch off adults (or even teenagers) to role play and there will be a lot of looking at the floor, sharp exits for a comfort break and all round nervousness about the task in hand.
When does it stop being ok to pretend to be something, or somewhere, else?
I say never.
My day dream on a sun lounger aside, a recent global study asked 7-11 year olds to draw what job they’d like when they grew up.
Seven is way too young to make decisions like that I hear you say! Children are too young to know what they want!
The study found that at this young age children did have aspirations but, shockingly, they were already stereotyping jobs according to gender. As a mother of a seven year old this made me sad and angry.
Getting children to fantasise about what job they'd love to do from a young age gives them amazing tool to work with for the rest of their lives.
Everything is entirely possible until (probably) one of us adults tells them otherwise or they get old enough to really understand the reality of what it takes to become a spaceman (I'm guessing at a PhD in astrophysics and intensive selection process) or a doctor (top exam results followed by six years at medical school and then a further ten years as a trainee).
But we can help change this.
Put gender to one side and just inspire the children you know about what it is you do. Maybe offer to speak at your local primary school.
I feel really hopeful for those children who keep aiming high. Their dreams might change but at least they’re aiming somewhere. And with some nurturing, encouragement, support and persistence they might just get there.
I had a great coaching session with a client recently and at the end, as always, I asked her what she’d learnt. And she said ‘that this really is possible’ and then she said that the visualisation that we had done around her chosen goal really made her think it had actually already happened.
So next time you have a brief moment, maybe on your commute or in a quiet moment over the weekend, have a little day dream. You never know, it might just come true.
For the record, my goal is to get my family to that island paradise in 2019. What’s yours?
