Learning to live in relationship with a difference is called maturity.” - Bishop Michael Curry
I know a man—I’ll call him Leon-- who has a vision of how he will live out his retirement. He wants to build a log house on land he owns overlooking a lake in the Adirondack mountains. There he’ll enjoy the solitude of his surroundings, spending his days fishing, canoeing, and maintaining nearby hiking trails. Hearing Leon describe the details of his dream, living peacefully in a house surrounded by pine trees on a quiet lake deep in the mountains is enough to make you pack your bags and take a road trip. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that Leon’s dream will become a reality. Although he is in good health and has the financial means to do so, he is 85, which makes moving to a remote area and building a house an unrealistic goal. When asked why, in the 20 years since his retirement he never built his house, he states that “time got away from me” and, before he knew it, he was in his 80’s. He now settles for a life in the Adirondacks that exists only in his imagination.
With such a compelling vision of his future, why did Leon lack the impetus to build his house and make his dream a reality? His is the kind of vision our culture encourages us to create. Dreaming big is considered to be an essential ingredient for greatness and success. Even some branches of yoga encourage us to dream big, advising that contentment is fostered when we expand our vision of a positive future. But recent research has taken the shine off positive thinking about future events. It seems that dreams, visions, and intentions do not, by themselves, guarantee success, contentment, or fulfillment. In fact, they may have the opposite effect, putting the brakes on change by sapping our energy.
Positive thinking about the future fosters a cognitive process known as mental attainment. Fantasizing about his log home with such detail lead Leon’s brain to think of it as already built; that is, mentally, he had attained it. And since his fantasizing put him in his log house, on his property, in the mountains, his brain assumed that energy was no longer needed to get there. Mental attainment creates feelings of satisfaction, causing us to overlook the effort needed to make the dream a reality. Dreams need energy to be brought to life, especially since we’ll be faced with numerous obstacles and setbacks along the way to creating them. Mentally building our dreams is a deeply satisfying process but the end product—that positive vision of our future—even though inspiring, lacks the spark needed to spur us to action. In fact, positive fantasies have been shown to initiate the relaxation response, deenergizing us by sending us to our “happy place” when what we need is a kickstart to get our engines running.
Does this suggest that we stop dreaming? Not at all. The world would be a grim place if it weren’t for our thoughts of what is possible. Dreams, intentions, and visions anchor us to the future, providing a point on the horizon to which we are drawn. Without them we become scattered, ungrounded, and mired in problem solving. But visions can easily morph into wishful thinking when they fail to rub up against reality. When we evaluate our positive future in light of what, in reality, will resist it, we create a gap, a line between two points. We experience discrepancy which generates friction. This wakes us from our dreamy sense of satisfaction, spurring us to take action. This form of comparison is a cognitive strategy known as mental contrasting: juxtaposing our positive future with our current reality. The wider the divide between what anchors us in the future to what resists in the present, the more discrepancy we experience. When the obstacles seem overwhelming, it may spur us to reevaluate our dreams to make them more attainable. Or we may become even more resolute, digging deep for the energy needed to forge ahead on the path toward that imagined point on our horizon.
Mental contrasting may seem like an interesting brain hack but it reflects a deeper wisdom found in yoga philosophy: the importance of embracing polarities. Yoga reminds us that we find the energy to create and live our future only by fully experiencing the present. Change, movement, and creation are sparked only when there is a line between two opposites. In his Yoga Sutras, Patanjali describes the very essence of a yoga practice as a balance between the polarities of effort and ease. We can only achieve this balance when we fully understand how it feels to be at either end of the continuum.
Polarities are at the very root of all yoga poses, as we root down to rise up, surrender to find strength, engage the back muscles to release the front. And there is no other area of the body in which the pull of polarities dominates than in our hips. Our hips are the center of our stability, but they are also the structure that allows for mobility. Hyperflexible hips create instability whereas tight hips restrict our movement. Each extreme comes with its own risk for injury. Many of us strive for openness, but healthy hips exist in the middle ground between flexibility and strength.
Many will find themselves in Leon’s shoes, living in a dream without the impetus to pursue it. If you have a dream but fail to act, you will get used to living there and lose the energy to make it real.
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