What is a Dream Project?

The must from within

What is a Dream Project?

A Dream Project is a thing you want to do for no reason other than you want to do it, you can’t stop thinking about it, and you must do it.

The must comes from within.

There are stakes. It feels like there will be consequences, like you’ll take a personal hit, maybe feel a little less like you, if you don’t do this thing. Dream Projects bubble up from inside. The motivation is personal.

Dream projects don’t necessarily make sense. Most people don’t think about their Dream Project and say, oh yeah, that’s a logical thing for me to do. You catch a Dream Project like you catch a cold. You’re not always sure where it came from, but you’ve certainly got one.

A Dream Project is a thing you want to do for no reason other than you want to do it.

No one will force you to do your Dream Project. Dream Projects usually begin and end with you. You are the keeper of the idea and whether or not you try to make it real is up to you.

Dream Projects are self-honoring. They never ask you to abandon yourself. They require you as you. Not who you might be one day or who you wish you were now or who you might pretend to be. 

Dream Projects don’t come with a downloadable set of instructions for how to do them. They require us to trust that we can figure it out, that we’ll find what we need.

Dream Projects require us to believe that we are the kind of people who can care for an idea and make it real.

You catch a Dream Project like you catch a cold. You’re not always sure where it came from, but you’ve certainly got one.

Can You Give Some Examples?

Absolutely.

Here are some Dream Projects Brainstorm Roadies are working on, as well as ones people on our waitlist say they have:

• Finishing my memoir. 

• Drinking coffee from beans I’ve roasted.

• Restoring an old home.

• Writing a novel.

• Opening a restaurant, Spinning yarn, Creating a genealogy, Starting a business

• Closing a business

• Building a dollhouse

• Exhibiting photographs

• Swimming across the English Channel

• Starting a Christmas tree farm

• Competing in a horse show

• Performing in a community theater production

• Starting a community composting initiative

• Creating a donut pop up

• Beginning a daily writing practice

• Planting a tea garden

• Learning the names of every plant in the state park

• Creating a video game to help people process grief

• Growing Spartina Alterniflora (marsh grass) for future living shoreline projects 

• Starting a newsletter about consumer packaged goods

• Interviewing my grandmother and capturing her story before it’s too late

• Creating a website of family stories. 

• Finally launching my podcast about underrecognized people throughout history

• Writing letters to my son because I keep meaning to and he’s already five

• Publishing my first nonfiction book

• Writing a horror screenplay

• Quilting

• Starting support groups for dads

• Hosting kindness workshops all over the world

How do I know if I have a Dream Project?

There’s a feeling.

It’s different for each of us. 

What’s the same is the pull. The pull to get something that’s inside of you out into the world. 

You know if it you have it. It’s that idea you can’t get out of your mind. That vision you can’t let go of. That tiny bit of curiosity, that inkling that you care, but you aren’t sure why…it’s a feeling.

A must that comes from within.