NUTS BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS

There are squirrels banging on my window.

I’ve lived in the northeast all of my life and I can tell you with certainty…this is unusual behavior for squirrels.

Naturally, there’s a simple answer.

Paul’s been feeding them for a couple of weeks.

Remarkably though, in that short time, we went from a yard full of skittish squirrels…to several timid little creatures grabbing nuts off the porch railing…to the newly emboldened who ate them a few feet away from us…to Paul hand feeding them…to them now, knocking on our windows, demanding to be fed.

Even the cats, who used to love chasing squirrels, are behaving differently.  AJ got up onto his hind legs, tapped one who was munching a peanut on the railing, then sat back down again. 

Cat and squirrel remained completely unphased.

It’s a perfect illustration of how to turn dreams into reality.

Let’s make the assumption – and I think it’s a fair one – that if squirrels had dream goals, being handed an assortment of nuts every day (pecans to bury and peanuts to eat now) would be high on that list.

It’s also reasonable to assume that giant, unpredictable humans and utterly predictable (they will chase you) cats would be potentially terrifying obstacles to achieving that goal.

I’ll go a step further and say that most squirrels wouldn’t have dreamed big enough to allow for the possibility of such fortune in the first place.

After all, what squirrel in her right mind would believe that a human and cat filled yard could be a safe and welcoming place?

How many of the local squirrels ever even conceived of such varied and scrumptious abundance? (Yes, there have been cashews, grapes, tomatoes and pumpkins in addition to the daily peanuts and pecans.)

Who among them has ever dared imagine that a place so plentiful – where the bounty of one squirrel’s winter stockpile, no matter how large, has no bearing on the potential of another’s – could actually exist in the very place where she had been living all along?

A squirrel fairy tale by any definition.

And yet…

This Week:  Reimagining What’s Possible

This may feel like a difficult year to lean into your dreams.

And so, I want to challenge you with this truth: When we are broken wide open, we are most capable of real change.

Take some time to let yourself consider:

What nut is out there just sitting on a railing, waiting for you?

What are the obstacles that stand in your way?

What do you risk by trying to surmount them to go and get it?

What else might be out there for you?  What would your dream life look like?  Go ahead and let yourself push past what experience tells you is possible.

You can trust everything you do that’s different from what you’ve always done will lead to somewhere new.

Some of those places will be disappointing and a few may be downright horrible. Many will be wonderfully surprising. And some, I can promise you, will be sheer magic.
What are you by risking by not trying to grab that first nut?