Hello Reader!​

I was playing Mario Kart Monopoly with my kiddos the other day and could not stop rolling sixes. It was getting to the point where I felt awful because I was beating them on every race but I literally could NOT stop doing it. They were telling me to go buy a lottery ticket 😂

I've been reading about creating from expansion vs. creating from necessity. Every other time I play a board game, I WANT those sixes so bad because I'm not playing my kids or looking at their sad losing faces. I usually roll 3s, 2s, or maybe a 5. But when I'm actually having fun for the first time playing a game and not worried about the outcome, the sixes didn't stop.

It makes me wonder what inner thoughts are holding me back from creating more of what I want. A family was very important to me but so is helping my community. I put out that I was looking to use my HR services to help nonprofits and found the perfect one to help.

So I've decided to examine the reasons I'm desperately clinging to certain dreams. Becoming a successful author. Building my own community of woman chasing our goals. Am I coming from a negative, fear-based space of do-or-die and that's why I can't get them going? Do I need to be more positive in my mindset and building? If only to keep myself going when I'm frustrated and want to give up.

Let's explore chasing our dreams from a place of love.

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Feel

Noticing which energy you're actually building from

Learn what fear-based wanting feels like in your body

Fear-based wanting has a signature. It's gripping. There's a tightness to it, an urgency, a "this HAS to happen or else" quality that lives somewhere in your chest or your gut. When you think about your dream, notice what your body does. Does it open or does it clench? Does the thought of the goal feel like possibility or like pressure?

Love-based wanting feels different. It's warm. There's pull instead of push. You move toward it because you want to be there, not because you're terrified of what it means if you never arrive. Neither feeling makes the dream itself good or bad. But they predict completely different experiences of chasing it, and honestly, completely different results.

Ask yourself what you're afraid the dream would prove

Here's the uncomfortable question I've been sitting with: if the dream is fear-based, what is it protecting me from? Sometimes a goal isn't really about the goal. Becoming a successful author isn't just about writing books. It can be about finally proving I'm talented, finally being taken seriously, finally justifying all the years of work. The dream becomes a verdict on my worth instead of an expression of it.

When a dream is carrying that much weight, no wonder it feels heavy. No wonder we cling. We're not holding a dream anymore, we're holding our entire sense of being enough. Give yourself 90 seconds with this question: if this dream never happened, what am I afraid that would say about me? The answer will tell you whether you're building or clinging.

Notice when you're having fun and when you've stopped

The Mario Kart Monopoly thing is the whole lesson. The sixes came when I stopped caring about the outcome and started enjoying the game. Pay attention to which parts of your dream actually light you up while you're doing them, and which parts you're only enduring for the result they might produce.

Joy while building isn't a bonus feature. It's information. The parts that feel alive are pointing at what the dream is really about for you. The parts that feel like grinding obligation are worth examining, because either they need to change or your relationship with them does. A dream you have to suffer through completely defeats the purpose of dreaming.

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Change

Loosening fear's grip on the dream

Separate the dream from the deadline you secretly attached to it

A lot of do-or-die energy isn't actually about the dream. It's about an invisible timeline we've attached to it. By this age. Before this happens. While I still can. The dream itself might be pure, but the deadline turns it into a countdown, and countdowns put your nervous system into scarcity mode. And scarcity mode is fear mode.

Try mentally removing the deadline and see what's left. If the dream still calls to you without the clock attached, it's real and it's yours. If the urgency was most of the feeling, that's worth knowing too. Most meaningful things take longer than we planned and arrive in forms we didn't expect, and they're not worth less for it.

Change "I have to make this happen" to "I get to find out"

Do-or-die framing puts the entire weight of the outcome on your shoulders and treats every setback as evidence of approaching failure. No wonder it's exhausting. No wonder we want to give up when it gets frustrating, because frustration in that frame feels like the beginning of the end.

There's another frame available: curiosity. I get to find out what happens if I keep writing. I get to find out what this community becomes if I keep showing up for it. Curiosity can hold setbacks in a way that desperation can't, because a setback inside an experiment is just information, while a setback inside a do-or-die mission is a threat. Same event, completely different experience, completely different ability to keep going.

Look at where the dream came from in the first place

Some of our dreams were chosen freely. Others were assigned to us so early we never noticed we didn't pick them. Dreams that came from old wounds, from proving someone wrong, from earning love that should have been free, those dreams tend to carry fear in their foundation because fear is what built them.

This doesn't mean you have to abandon them. A dream can start in a wounded place and still be worth pursuing, but only after you've updated the reason. Ask yourself: if I had nothing to prove to anyone, would I still want this? If the answer is yes, you've found the love underneath the fear, and you can build from there instead. If the answer is no, you just got some of your life back.

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Build

Creating from expansion instead of necessity

Build the smallest version that brings you joy right now

Fear-based building is always aimed at the someday version. The published book, the thriving community, the finish line where the feeling of having made it finally arrives. Love-based building finds a version of the dream you can actually live inside today. Writing for one person who needs it. A conversation with one woman chasing her goals. The tiny, present-tense version of the thing.

This isn't settling. It's the opposite. The small version keeps you connected to why you wanted this at all, and it generates the energy that the someday version can only promise. Build something this week, however small, that gives you the feeling the big dream is supposed to deliver eventually. That feeling is fuel, and fear never produces it.

Surround the dream with people instead of pressure

Dreams built in isolation get heavy. There's nobody to share the small wins with, nobody to laugh with when things go sideways, so the only relationship you have is with the outcome. That's how the clinging starts.

Bring people in. Not as an audience for the finished product, but as company for the building. Study with your kid. Find the nonprofit. Tell a friend what you're working on, not so they can hold you accountable, but so the journey has some warmth in it. Things built with people in the room tend to come from love, because love is literally in the room while you build them.

Let the dream evolve without calling it failure

Fear holds dreams in their original form because changing them feels like losing them. Love lets dreams grow up. The dream you formed five years ago was made by a person who knew less than you know now. If it's shifting shape, getting smaller in some ways and bigger in others, that's not a downgrade. That's the dream becoming real instead of staying perfect.

I wanted to help my community and I found a way that didn't exist in my original plan. The author dream and the community dream are still alive, but I'm done gripping them like they're the last lifeboat. They'll be built better with open hands. Everything is.

Because here's what Mario Kart Monopoly taught me: the sixes come when you're actually enjoying the game.

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What dream have you been clinging to instead of building? Hit reply and tell me. I'd love to know what you're chasing and where the energy is coming from.

Have a lovely day! - Kate

PS

Pen-A-Pal

If you know anyone who would love a handwritten letter in the mail, please check out my daughter's website. It makes a great gift from a grandparent to encourage kiddos to write to their own family!

​Pen-A-Pal is a monthly service that sends handwritten letters including stickers.

​https://pen-a-pal.com/​

When you sign up there is a place to put in topics the recipient is interested in reading about and if you sign up for premium, the letter incudes paper and a stamped envelope to write Bee back or send to friend or family member!

You can also follow along on her journey on Instagram! Thanks for your support!

​https://www.instagram.com/penapalletters​