Make the Time to Dream

Intro by Skip Cohen

If you don’t build your dreams, someone will hire you to build theirs!

Unknown Author

If you’ve been following Suzette Allen’s social media trail, you know she and Jonny hit the road in September with the dream she had – a 13,000-mile teaching and photography tour of the U.S. She and Jonny have become ambassadors for an industry they love dearly.

What I love most about this post from Suzette is the topic is something with which we can all identify. We all have dreams – big ones, little ones that make us smile. But too often, life gets in the way. Then there are dreams we give up on – they’re just too far outside our comfort zone. Lastly, our priorities in life change, and before you know it, those dreams have been put in a box and kicked under the bed.

Then, if you’re like me, something happens, or someone comes into your life that reminds you of the dream you put on the backburner. For me, Suzette and Jonny are two of those people who inspire me. They’ve become good friends of ours over the years, and every visit is an opportunity to share ideas and talk about an industry we all genuinely care about.

They’re both dreamers, but they’re not afraid to tackle those dreams head-on. They’re also not afraid to ask for help to accomplish those dreams. And that’s where so many of us fall down – we don’t ask for help.

Be a dreamer! Don’t be afraid to step out of P-mode with your life as well as your camera. We’re all part of a fantastic industry filled with associates who can help us all achieve anything we want!

But like Suzette says – it starts with figuring out your “Why?”

By Suzette Allen

I have had so many people ask me lately about the Bubble Trailer Tour and how I came up with the idea! It’s certainly a big project and a stretch to accomplish it all, but it fits so well into my dream life, it is a joy to push through the learning curve because I know it is at the heart of what I love and want to do with my life!

I actually got a book a couple years ago called Design the Life You Love, by Ayse Birsell, and as I read through it, doing the activities and assignments, I found myself becoming clearer and clearer on what I would truly love to do, and where my strengths lie and what fits into Jonny’s skills and temperament as well. I should preface that with a book I previously read, called Start with Why by Simon Sinek, which revealed my core purpose: My Why. I discovered my “why” is to inspire and encourage others, so that became the framework on which I built my plan. Of course, it all includes photography, my primary medium I use to express my visual voice, and teaching, which is one of my best core skills.

In the book, Design the Life you Love, it talked about taking all the ingredients of your life (you don’t really want to scrap them and start over) and just rearranging them into a different form. Many different exercises helped me to think of different ways to do or embrace the things I love and add in the things missing that make me LOVE my life.

Well, embracing adventure and doing life together while traveling, camping, photographing, writing and simplifying just seemed to fit the bill and out of that came the idea of the Bubble Trailer Light Tour. It has developed and become much clearer as I have stepped into it as a PLAN, instead of just a dream, though. That part is truly a journey which cannot be realized apart from walking down that road a ways.

I think that many people actually have a blueprint in their minds of what they want to do with their life, but the hardest part is actually letting GO of what life is like (the comfort zone and sure thing) to embrace the unknown (who knows if I will really like it) and risk the radical change that might be required. Change is always uncomfortable and all risk takes courage and simply giving yourself permission. Many of us just need to give ourselves permission to follow after our dreams. Sometimes we need to say NO to something in order to say Yes to what you want to do.  And as much as we can imagine and justify and plan, we have no idea how it will affect us or what impact it will have all around us until we actually DO IT! Therein lies the risk!

I am presently on that journey and learning to write and share publicly about my transformation process. Stay tuned for more on this topic and images of what I discover along the way. The goal is to strip away all that is not truly me to reveal what IS. To say No to all the things that gobble up precious time so I can say Yes to the things that stir me up, inspire me, and fulfill my purpose—or my dreams!

I truly think the first step is to give yourself permission to pursue your dreams before you can even fully allow your mind to embrace what it will look like.

Start today and choose to give yourself the freedom to change what you do and focus on to be able to pursue that life that is “everything you dreamed”.