Dare to Delight Yourself in 2024
Part of the “How to DREAM like Walt Disney” process, read more here.
Say what you will about Walt Disney (ok, only nice things around here ;) ) the man knew how to come up with boundary-pushing ideas and then create them. This email series takes inspiration from some of his signature practices of dreaming big so that you can apply them to setting a 2024 New Year’s Resolution that pushes the boundaries of what you think is possible in your life.
Fairy Godmother Coaching exists to help you feel more of your unique magic in your everyday life. The process of DREAMing beyond your limits and creating that dream will have your every day bursting at the seams with enchantment, fairy’s honor!
First up, D: Dare to Delight Yourself!
You know you are engaging with a Disney product or service if it leaves you full of surprise and delight. It’s part of why people love their Disney experiences so much. Walt Disney knew that these emotions were powerful. Part of his legacy is his extraordinary ability to inspire them.
In How to Be Like Walt, Pat Williams tells a story about Walt Disney approaching his accountants about putting on the first Christmas Parade at Disneyland. If you’ve seen the Disneyland Christmas Parade, you know it’s extravagant including several huge moving trees lit up to the nines, horn-playing soldier nutcrackers, and at least ten glowing floats with a host of Disney characters atop flanked by dancers … oh, and SANTA! The plans for the first parade did not fall short of this spectacle. The accountants told Walt “No, no one expects it, no one is paying to see it so, why would we do this?” As the story goes, Disney said, “That’s exactly why we need to do it, because no one expects it!”
As far as I’m concerned… this is the key to the emotion: the thought, “This is more than I could ever expect”.
Let me explain.
Research in psychology shows us that we create ALL of our emotions with our thoughts. That’s right… ALL of them. Including delight! We have the power to create this amazing emotion for ourselves. We don’t need to travel to a Disney Park or watch a Disney movie (although I’m not stopping you). We can create it all on our own. Isn’t that incredible?!
Try on the thought, “This is more than I could ever expect”. Feeling delighted? If not, that’s fine! Maybe there’s another thought you can identify that creates that amazing emotion for you. If you need more help, I’ve got some guiding questions in this journal form.
There are two reasons why dreaming up a 2024 resolution that delights you will bring more unique magic into your everyday life.
First, using delight as a guide will help you dream in a way that expands your magic. Your magic, as I define it, is anything that helps empower and enable you. The emotion of delight likely will be one of those magic things that empowers and enables you. When you dream to delight, the dream you come up with will likely be something that empowers and enables you because of that. Working to achieve that dream and achieving it throughout the year will create more opportunity for feeling empowered, feeling your magic, in your life.
Second, envisioning more than you could expect for your year-end in 2024 will inherently be something beyond what you have created so far in your life. That means you will have to grow to create it. The process of growing is another way to bring your magic into your everyday life.
A word of caution.
This step is dare to delight yourself because your brain is likely going to fight you. As you are trying to push what you have previously thought possible for yourself, your survival brain is going to kick in. It’s going to send its watchdog at you barking like crazy. This is because our survival brain sees anything new and different as a threat. It wants us to stay in the cave. Thousands of years ago… we needed that alarm… not so much anymore. Trying new things can actually be very rewarding, even empowering, these days!
We just have to work with our survival brain because we haven’t caught up with our current circumstances of relative safety yet.
First, give your watch dog some love. Our watch dog just wants to keep us safe. Thank puppy for its concern and help it curl up beside you. Using your WAND may be useful in this process.
Then, work on feeling daring.
Again, any emotion comes from our thoughts so, find your thought that helps you feel daring and let it help you dream to delight for December 31, 2024!
Click on the image above to watch the video all about the first practice in the DREAM process.
After watching, be sure to fill out your journal form here to start trying out the practice of daring to delight yourself as you focus on dreaming up something big for 2024.
I will send a form recap to you kicking off your 2024 Once Upon A Time fairy tale… this is gonna be good!
If you get stuck, or if you work better with a guide, get on my calendar, let’s chat!
P.S. Did you know that research by the American Society of Training and Development found that having an accountability partner gives you a 65% chance of completing a goal and that adding specific accountability appointments increases your chance of success by up to 95%?! Let’s create your DREAM together! Join my FREE community for DREAMers here which includes
- New content every month to support creating your big dream starting in 2024.
- Discounts on coaching.
- Monthly group coaching and DREAM progress-sharing calls.
- Opportunities to connect with others DREAMing like Walt Disney!
