Hey fam, hey. Welcome to the Unlock Your Life podcast. I’m your host, Lori Harris, and this is episode number three. Today we’re talking about those glorious double Ds. Are you a double D? I am. A dreamer and a doer. I’m telling you the tools you need to make your dreams come true, to make your dreams welcome. So let’s get it going.

Welcome to the Unlock Your Life podcast, a podcast for highly successful visionary women who want more out of life. If you feel that ache of unfulfillment in your soul, you’re in the right place sis. Join life mastery consultant Lori A. Harris as she teaches you how to stop living for others and finally put yourself first. Let’s dive into today’s show.

You know, I started studying personal development back at the end of the 70s. I’d won a scholarship in junior achievement to study The Dale Carnegie Course, and that began my whole career of learning the tools we need to have rich and fulfilling lives. My next coach or mentor was Les Brown, and it was when he was just getting started in the personal development world. He did what we all do. When you learn something new, he shared it with others, and I was in his tutelage.

My final coach and mentor was Jack Jackson. Jack was the founder and director of the Inner City Cultural Center, and he showed me over and over and over again what it takes to do what appears to be impossible. It starts with action, and you’ve gotta have a dream. He taught me to have a dream, dream big, and dream often, and just keep going.

So today I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned about dreaming and doing. As a young person, I was that one who went to college and literally had my world changed. My life exploded. I was exposed to so many new things, and I loved every bit of it. I made an early decision that I would be a person who worked for freedom. I would devote myself to anything that I thought had enriched my life.

So that meant that I worked in the Free South Africa Movement. I worked in the Nuclear Freeze Movement. I worked at the Feminist Women’s Health Center. I even helped people resist registering for the draft. My theme was helping people go towards a more self-realized freedom filled life. Whatever looked like freedom, that’s what I was trying to do. Not just for myself but for other people, for my people.

Then finally I landed as a criminal defense attorney, civil rights attorney, or litigator. I was continuing to work for freedom. But in the last 10 years, I’ve been exposed to another way of doing things. I’d been exposed to and want to share with you the power of vision, the power of having a dream.

So I want to tell you why I call this the glorious double D’s. I want you to imagine. So I’m sitting on the deck of a cruise ship in the middle of the Mediterranean having my own imaginary conversation with Shonda Rhimes, and I’m arguing with her. She says at page 79 in her memoir, A Year of Yes, lesson one, ditch the dream. Be a doer, not a dreamer. Already I’m pissed off.

Maybe you know exactly what you dream of being or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something. Seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your perfect vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring, and dreams are not real. Just do.

So as I said, Shonda’s not wrong, but she’s not right either. Because as I sit on the deck of this cruise ship, I was there as a result of a dream. For a decade prior, I had been dreaming of going to Petra. Petra, Jordan. I asked many people to go with me. I asked my cousins. I asked my sisters. I asked my friends. I asked many, many people. More importantly, I asked my husband. They all said, “Hell no. I am not going to the Middle East. That sounds like a bad idea to me.” But I had a dream. I really, really wanted to go. While I don’t generally object to travelling alone, for some reason I thought that this was a trip that I wanted to share with someone.

So fast forward, I’m no longer married, and I meet a man. I meet someone that I like very, very much. I share with him that I have a dream of going to Petra, Jordan in the Middle East. He says, “I’d do that with you.” I said excuse me. He said, “I’d do that with you.” And I was thrilled. I was really, really excited.

That’s not the part that’s exciting or amazing. Let me go on. So he says, “I’d do that with you.” We keep it on the backburner as an opportunity for travel. We plan a trip, and that trip doesn’t go exactly as planned but we end up going to the Panama Canal. We win or are given an opportunity to go on a cruise to anywhere we want anywhere this cruise line goes for free.

So that’s how I ended up being in the middle of the Mediterranean on a cruise ship. I went there because I had a dream and only because I had a dream. Had I not taken some action then no, I would not have ended up there. But it started with a dream. My dream expanded to something more. So not only did I go to Petra, Jordan, but I also went on a cruise of the Mediterranean. I went to Italy and France and Spain.

So when I work with my coaching clients, I often encourage them to write a vision of what they would absolutely love. We start with, “I’m so happy and grateful now that I am…” They write a vision that they can’t even really put their hands on, but they would absolutely love it. So they allow themselves to play with the idea of, “Wouldn’t it be cool? What would it feel like? What would I absolutely love?” They write it down. They write and cast a vision for three years out. They allow themselves to play in the land of possibility for three years out.

Then they close that dream with, “This or something better still.” So they don’t hold on so tightly that the dream can’t get bigger. So while I had a dream that I travel to the Middle East with my beloved and get to see Petra, Jordan, I also left open the possibility this or something better still.

So here I am arguing with Shonda Rhimes, not in real life but in my mind. No, dreaming does matter. Dreaming is important. Dreaming is essential. It’s not just doing. It’s the combination of the two. So I’m thinking to myself, “Is Shonda Rhimes the Thoreau of our times? Is Shonda Henry David Thoreau?” Well, she kind of is reminding me of Henry David Thoreau at this time.

Now it would be easy to dismiss Henry David Thoreau as just some other old white guy who lived a long time ago that people keep quoting, but there’s a reason why people keep quoting Henry David Thoreau. The truth is he lived only 45 short years, and he died prior to the end of the Civil War. Henry David Thoreau was an abolitionist living in the Boston area, and we still quote him today. Because he knew a few things about what it takes to live a rich fulfilling life. It’s not about the stuff, and he talked about that. He talked about simplify, simplify, simplify.

Here’s what my man Henry has to say. “If one advanced confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” What does Henry mean by that? Well, he says if. It means we have a choice. We get to live the life of our imaginations if we’re willing to take a step. We don’t have to. We can continue to live boring lives by default, taking what we get every day if that’s what we choose to do. It’s a choice.

If one advances. So you have to go towards the dream. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. So you have to have a little bit of faith, a little bit of belief. Go in the direction of your dreams. You’ve gotta do something to move this dream forward. Endeavor, meaning taking some of the steps. Doing something that’s logical that will move this dream forward.

If you do, you will meet success unexpected in common hours. Meaning that once you start taking steps, the next step will be revealed to you. Once you stop taking steps, then help will come to you. You will meet that person. You’ll run into the right person. You’ll make the right introduction. You’ll stumble upon information that you would have otherwise not seen because you hadn’t moved your position in life.

Common hours. What is common hours? Common hours means common hour thinking. That means what everyone else is thinking. Common hour thinking is the peanut gallery. The people who stop with, “Well, how are you gonna do that? You ain’t never done that before. Who do you think you are?” That’s common hour thinking. Common hour thinking is not the kind of thinking that belongs to people who dream and do. So why do we continue to listen to this man who died at the age of 45, but still some over 100 years later we’re still learning and often quoting this prophetic quote? Because it is a code, a secret to life.

I love Henry David Thoreau because he was a man of action. He did the things that he believed in. He lived a life that was enriching to him, and he had conviction. He didn’t just say he was an abolitionist. Brotherman went to jail because he was an abolitionist.

Now, let’s look at another quote. Shirley Chisholm. Shirley Chisholm says, “You don’t make progress standing on the sidelines whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.” Where do ideas come from? They come from our minds. They come from our vision. They come from our dreams. Yes, we do have to take action, but we also have to allow ourselves to dream. How are we going to make this world a better place? First by dreaming. By coming up with a vision of a life that we would absolutely love living. Nobody’s talking about anybody’s nine point plan, but everyone’s still talking about Martin Luther King’s dream. A dream matters.

So when you’re working with a coach, a coach is going to help you to discover a dream. A coach is going to require that you tell the truth. Tell the truth to yourself, tell the truth in your vision, and write that vision down. What does it matter writing it down? Well, writing it down means just by the simple fact of writing it down, you’re 42% more likely to realize that dream. To effectually have that dream come true for you simply by the act of writing it down. Those glorious double Ds, you will go forth and take action on your dreams. You can go further. You can go faster when you have help.

So why do people work with a coach? Because a coach is going to give you a way of looking at things. It’s going to confront your belief system. It’s going to challenge you with questions and make you look at your own behaviors and look at the things that are holding you back and encourage you to take action.

So when you’re working with a coach, you have the benefit of your vision. The next thing you have is the benefit of an organized controlled curriculum. A way of approaching a system. Then you have the final thing of support. Your coach is your support, like a tripod. In the middle of that is you. You are the most important thing. You have your vision, you have the curriculum, and then you have your support system of your coach. These are the things that are going to turn on the light of your vision.

So Shonda goes on to say, “Say yes to life. When you say yes, yes feels like the sun. Yes feels like speaking your whole truth. Yes allows you to gather your people. Yes tells you to go for life. Live your life and live it abundantly.” So is Shonda wrong when she says, “Dreaming won’t get you anywhere?” She’s kind of wrong, but she’s kind of right. If dreaming and doing, you’ve got to employ those beautiful double Ds. Are you a double D person? I am. I certainly hope you are too.

Well, we’ve reached the end of episode three of the Unlock Your Life podcast. We were talking about those glorious double Ds. In order to live a life of your greatest imagination, it is going to require two things of you. You’ve got to dream, and you’ve got to do. You can’t have one without the other. If you were just a doer then that’s not going to give you the excitement of having a dream, of growing yourself, of doing something that feels impossible at the outset.

But it’s not enough just to dream. Shonda’s right. You are going to be required to do something. The best way and the quickest way to get where you want is to do it within a structure of support. You start with the vision. You write that vision down. Having that vision written down will make you 42% more likely to achieve your dream. Next, you work within the structure of a curriculum, and you have the support of your coach or mentor at your side. It’s a beautiful thing. Who’s in the center of this beautiful, glorious dream? You, living your very best life.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast. To celebrate the launch of my show, I’m giving away a soft cushy Unlock Your Life hoodie. I’m going to be giving away five to five lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review this show. It doesn’t have to be a five star review, although I really hope you love this show. I want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome show that gives you tons of value. Visit loriaharris.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how you can enter. I’ll be announcing the winners in future episodes. So keep listening.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast. If you want more information on show you can transform your life and do it quickly, visit loriaharris.com. See it on the next episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast.