The Hammer

This month we are doing a deep dive into where dreams come from! The reason this site is called the DreamAnvil is so we can explore this question and in the process of doing so be encouraged to chase after our own dreams. I like the thought of the Dreamer as a sort of magical blacksmith and our dream the ingot. Last week we talked about the heat of passion, the fire from which our primordial dreams come from. From the fire of our passion, a lump is formed, an ingot of pure possibility. The barest hint of our future dream. To make that dream a reality we must take the ingot out of the fire and do something with it. To forge our dreams we will need to do the hard work of giving that shapeless ingot form.

Our desire will be the hammers we use to forge our dreams. This is where our dreams, our goals transform from an idea to action. What is our desire in this context? It is the ideal form of your dream, the perfect finished good that you would like to achieve. Often this will not come all at once, this desire comes from the actions we take in response to our passion. The big idea may only form after you have decided to take action. This is perfectly normal, what matters is the moment we go from daydreaming to actually bringing our ideals to life.

How do we do this? We hit it with the hammer of course! By this I mean we use the same processes we talked about back in January! We set our sights on our goal. We take the big ideas and break them down into smaller manageable tasks. We track how well we are staying on task, examining the goals for failures along the way. This is where the work starts, where we reach into the ethereal and place it upon our anvil for shaping.

At first, it might seem that things are going very fast, you have an idea and you are making it happen. Eventually, we all hit a rut or a wall, a point where the ingot cools and is no longer as malleable. This is common. Every dream will harden the further from that initial idea that it gets. Sometimes we can throw these back into the fire, other times we must go forward. The quick answer we often jump to first when things get tough is to start using a bigger hammer or hitting the ingot harder. This is not what you should do, you have a greater chance of breaking your dream or yourself. Instead, stay steady, and keep tapping, eventually, that dream will bend instead of breaking.

We are moving from dream to reality in this stage, we may have to dip back into our passions multiple times for inspiration and to sustain our idea. This means that the final form can change like quicksilver, but don’t despair. Your dreams are growing alongside you, and this means they may change as needed. Don’t fight this. See where it leads first, let the ideas change and drift and follow them if you think of a better idea.

This task carries with it a lot of expectations, placed upon both the dream and the dreamer. At times, especially when a dream has gone cold, it can feel like a constant uphill battle to finish a project. When you face obstacles remember where your dream came from, return to the fire and soak up its warmth. It may take a lot of time and effort if you are facing a dream that has hardened. Be patient with the process and with yourself. All things take time and this is no different. However, remember that nothing is perfect and this applies to your dream as well. There will always be a gap between the initial vision we have for our dreams and what we are able to produce. Every project is tempered by our skills, so come back next week to find out why.