Dreaming Bravely

Clarity is the strongest magnet in the universe.

2024. Let’s take a deep breath into it.

How does it feel? In your body, in your spirit?

How are you armored from it? How are you protecting yourself? Maybe from disappointment, from risk? protecting yourself from dreaming?

The last few years have been so much to integrate. And it makes sense in light of all of the unexpected elements of the last few years, and the violence we’ve seen, especially in the last few months, in the middle east, to protect ourselves. To hedge our bets. To armor ourselves from hoping and dreaming. Maybe if you’re honest with yourself some new cynicism has begun to set in.

How grounded are you, at this moment, facing this new year?
How clear in your vision?

How open?

Have you taken a moment yet to get clear and to declare what you want to create and magnetize this year, and how you want to grow?

May these next few weeks be that for you.

I have created a few experiences to lead you in dreaming bravely:

The deep dive is my course Your Dream Year. It’s volume 1 in my 3 volume Visionary Mastercourse for Spirited Leaders, including volume 2, Sourced, and volume 3 which is coming early this year, Spirited Leadership. It’s a journey with me to design the year of your dreams. Especially if you have ever considered doing personal mentorship or coaching with me, take this course. I have poured in my tools for spiritual growth, for clarifying your vision for your next chapter, manifesting your deepest dreams, taking brave, aligned action, magnetizing resources, and healing a broken heart. Your Dream Year is full of illuminating questions and practices to show up to this year in your radiance and vibrancy, regardless of what surprises it has for you. All 6 modules contain collections of videos that are intentionally brief and rich, so you can watch or just listen to just one a day over the course of this month, and let it unfold in you. You can learn more and register at nicolemeline.com/visionary

If you want a guided workshop with me to envision your goals for 2024 in all spheres of your life, and give you a taste of the Dream Year course, join me for the Envision 2024 workshop, a powerful 90-minute gathering I hosted last week, and perfect for you to drop into at your perfect time.

And the 3rd offering is the JOY RIDE. Completely free, and my gift to you, to welcome the new with joy and some sweat confetti and give you a taste of the Alter Together platform’s soulful workouts. Join for free at nicolemeline.com/joyride

Let’s talk about Dreaming Bravely.

This is my alternative title for the Your Dream Year course, which I’ve thought about changing, but I love the audacity of a course called Your Dream Year.

Really? In this wildly unpredictable moment in time, in this tumultuous world, we can design a dream year?

Yes, we can. 

For 2 reasons:

First: clarity is the strongest magnet in the universe.

You cannot even imagine what will come to you when you become crystal clear on your vision, distill your priorities, build protective boundaries around your path and your purpose, and begin to take courageous, aligned action.

And second: as we fully explore in Your Dream Year and in the Envision Workshop, your dreams are only secondarily about their actualization or accomplishment. They are primarily a path to you becoming the highest, strongest, bravest version of yourself.

God stirs in us our wildest dreams to graduate us. The dreams you can barely imagine coming true because they seem so far off — the dreams that are in conversation or argument with your fears or your self-doubt, those dreams: dreams so big the current version of you can’t accomplish them. Dreams so big you have to grow into them. You have to up-level yourself. Graduate to a new version. And this process, this growing up, this growing into ourselves IS the gift. And it becomes more important than the accomplishment or the timeline of actualization. If you ask anyone who has accomplished some incredible, hard-won feat like winning an Olympic medal or building a successful business or organization, they will tell you the greatest gift was becoming the person who could do this. Learning, growing, failing, failing better, as Samuel Beckett put it: “Fail. Fail again. Fail better. Progressing.”

So the gift of clarifying your dreams and your purpose and aligning yourself with it is who you become along the way, however long and swervy and surprising that way turns out to be.

In yoga, there is the concept of the drishdi, which means the gaze. When you enter a pose that challenges your balance, you set your drishdi - you set your gaze on something steady - maybe a point on the wall or the edge tip of your mat, and it’s amazing how when you anchor your gaze, it anchors you. You stay in the pose instead of falling out of it. 

You can’t predict what will come at your this year.

You can set your drishdi. You can decide who you want to become.

You can’t guarantee you will accomplish every goal you set this year, because of variables outside your control. You can become the person capable of accomplishing your goals, the person on the road to them.

That’s how I see this last year for me. A year of foundation-building, practices-establishing, refining platforms, creating and refining procedures. Both spiritually and creatively or professionally. The behind the scenes and under the foundation stuff that is not so flashy, but if it’s not there, you can only build so high before things start to crack. Even relationally, practicing showing up with an open heart, with refined boundaries, with clearer, braver communication.

Progress, progress, progress. 

Progress over perfection.

Foundations.

I love Tony Robbins’ statement,

“We tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, and underestimate what we can accomplish in 10 years.”

The writer Zora Neale Hurston opens her astonishing novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” with this statement:

“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”

Some years are full of swift manifestation and answers to prayers.

And some years are full of the slow, underground work of making sure we’re asking the right questions, and being shaped by asking them. Some years hollow us out to dream bigger and braver than what we’ve been settling for.

I want to speak over you the manifesto of the VISIONARY Mastercourse, and call you into leadership this year, beginning with self-leadership. With leading yourself in honor of your bravest dreams. 

This vision is my wish for us this year, and the path the VISIONARY course charts, as it applies to you.

From my heart to yours, join me in the Visionary: Your Dream Year course, or the Envision Workshop. I would love to lead you to design the year of your dreams. To design the you of your dreams.

As we alter — grow, change, become — together.

Happy new year.