What If You Actually Believed Your Dreams Were Possible? | Mid Week Tease

0:00Welcome to the Midwick Tees with me Adele Oñango, where I share some random and not-to-random thoughts on things. And in this episode, I want to talk about something that I'm currently really actively doing, which is owning my dream. I'm not necessarily going to be unpacking how to achieve your dreams. I'm not going to talk about how to manifest your dream. I'm not going to give you five steps to getting everything you've wanted. Nah. I want to talk about something that I think has to happen much earlier than all of that jazz. Owning your dreams. Because I've really been thinking about how sometimes we have these dreams for ourselves. But if we're really being honest somewhere deep down, we don't actually believe that we are worthy of those dreams. We don't actually believe that we are capable of them. We want the thing, but we can't actually see ourselves living the life where

1:06the thing has happened. You know what I mean? And so we keep the dream at a safe distance. You know, we say things like maybe one day, you know, it would be nice if imagine if and sometimes you might think that's humility, but I don't think it is. I generally think it's fear. Because there is something, what is the word? There's something vulnerable, incredibly vulnerable about saying I want this. I want to build this. I want to experience this. I want my life to look like this. You know, because a minute you admit that you really want something, you also have to face the possibility that you might not get it, right? You might fail. And you might have to face the

2:08possibility that someone might laugh when that happens. So someone might think you're being unrealistic. You know, you might try publicly and it doesn't work. And so sometimes it really does feel safer to have a dream than to own a dream. And I have been thinking about this a lot on this journey to for Manila's Women Life that we had this past Saturday. And when it happened, when I was standing in that room looking at this thing we had created, when I looked at the stage, when I looked at all the photo and interactive boots that we had, I had this moment of realizing I had seen this before, not literally, but I had seen it in my head. I had seen it. I had seen it such a long time ago. Over a year ago, I had seen our stage. I had seen what it was going to look like. And I had

3:13owned that dream. I had owned it before anything else had to happen. I first had to own that dream. I had to acknowledge that I am worthy of that dream. And I am capable of bringing that dream to life. You have to be able to see yourself there. Whatever your dream is. You know, I had imagined what I wanted for Manila's Women Life to feel like. I knew that I wanted a roomful of women. I knew what kind of conversations I wanted us to have. I knew how intentional I wanted the experience to be. I thought about the stage guys. I thought about it. I thought about that stage. I thought about the furniture on that stage. The plants, the conversation. How I wanted the audience to speak into the moment. You know, I had thought about tiny details that somebody attending might

4:19never even have looked at. But I was dreaming them. You know, I pitched global brands and said, hey, I have this idea. I think it matters. Would you like to be a part of it? And one major once, Spotify said, yes, quite a few said, no, or not now, one said yes and then it goes to us. And you know, the reason I want to share this with you now, well, it's hot in my head. And it's it's where I'm at in life in terms of owning my dreams, it's because I think sometimes we really skip over. How much courage it actually requires for you to own that dream because before anybody else can see your vision, you have to see it. Before anyone on my team could see the vision, I had to see it.

5:22Before anybody else can invest in your idea, you have to decide that the idea is worth investing in. You know, before anybody else believes the thing should exist, you have to say, I think this should exist. And it sounds really simple, but it's not because sometimes it's not that the dream isn't too big. Sometimes, and this is the one thing I want you to really focus on in this episode, sometimes our current understanding of our cells is too small to hold that dream. Let me take it again. Sometimes the dream isn't too big. Sometimes our current understanding of our cells is just too small to hold the dream. You might dream of running a business,

6:26but struggle to imagine yourself as somebody who runs a successful company. You might dream of financial abundance, but find it difficult to imagine yourself having that much money. You might want to make a film. You might want to write a book. You might want to travel the world. You might want to buy land. You might want to change careers. You might want to create something. I don't know, build a peaceful life. But when you really try to imagine yourself there, something inside you says, people like me don't really do that. Something inside you says, who do you think you are? That is the place I want us to pay attention to because sometimes we are waiting to become some imaginary future version of our cells before we give ourselves permission to pursue that dream. Owning your dream doesn't have to come after you

7:34feel more confident, more connected to more successful, more healed. Whatever. You can own your dream now and stop seeing yourself as small because that is stopping yourself from seeing yourself in that dream that you want and owning it. Am I... Is it landing? Now a lot of people might think what I'm saying is manifestation. And I know visualization can sometimes be spoken about as though you know this thing where you sit down and you imagine something intensely and somehow it appears. I don't think I really believe in that and that's not what I'm talking about. I am talking about allowing yourself to become familiar with the possibility of your own future. Can you picture yourself there? Have you stopped looking yourself out of it? And I don't just

8:37mean the glamorous parts. Let's say your dream is to run your own business. Can you imagine what an ordinary Tuesday in that life looks like? Where are you working? It's 10 a.m. What are you doing? Who are you emailing? What problems are you solving? What does your bank account need to look like? What kind of decisions are you making? Who do you need around you? What skills does that version of you have that perhaps you need to start developing now? Do you get what I mean? Because when you allow yourself to really imagine the life, something begins to shift. I'm seeing it with myself guys. I'm seeing it with myself. We at For Man and Less Women Live, we launched our first Manalist creation, our first Manalist product. I have been in business seven years now, but I've never had my own product. Back in the day I did collaboration products, it was limited

9:42edition products, but they were in mine. I was collaborating with other established businesses. You get what I mean? This is my first solo in house product. It was terrifying. And for me to really own that dream, I needed to stop thinking of myself as being too small, such that that dream, I don't have the capacity to even hold it, let alone own it. I can tell you right now, one of my biggest headaches is trying to get us in specific stores in Nairobi. Right? And what's crazy is I can see myself walking into the particular, these ones store I want. One store I want. And I see myself walking in there with my boxes of my product and figuring out how the arrangement is going to look like.

10:43I have been to that store after I gave myself permission to own my dream. I went to that store. Okay. I asked the manager, how does it happen? They gave me an email address. I emailed the email address. They are yet to get back to me. Guess what? I'm going down Thursday. Bro, you have on this dream, you know? And when you allow yourself to really imagine the life something begins to shift, you move from imagine if I could do that to, okay, if I'm actually going to do this, what would I need? You know, start thinking logistics. You know, you move from fantasy into building. Because as a, for example, let's go back to for Manila's Women Life. Yes, I visualize it. But between the visualization and me standing in that

11:45room, this past Saturday was work. A lot of work. There were budgets. There were emails. There were pitches. There were production meetings. There were suppliers. There were decisions. There were things that changed last minutes. There were things that went wrong. One major thing. There's one supplier who, hey, hey, hey, I did not sleep the night before because they were moving mad, you know? There was money that had to be spent. After the show, I went back to my room at trademark suits at Inakitown, beautiful, beautiful room, comfortable bed. But do you know what I was doing up there? I was doing our inventory for the product. I was lining up invoices that I had to pay. And I had visualized all of this. Not just the glamorous I'm standing on that stage and how the stage looks like. I wanted everything that comes with running your own media network and

12:47building your own your own live show. Do you know what I mean? So visualization gave the work direction, but I still had to do the work. Another thing I wanted to share is that many times courage comes before confidence. I think sometimes we believe that we're going to feel confident and then we're going to do the scary thing. You get what I mean? And I don't think life always works like that. Sometimes it's you have this desire, you have this dream, then courage, then action, then evidence, and then eventually confidence. Like I didn't have proof that people would buy tickets to for Manila's women live before deciding to do it. I didn't have proof. I didn't know that we were going to sell out. There is no way I could have known how the audience was going to respond. I wouldn't have known which brands would say yes when we pitched to them. And at some point

13:49you just have to act without the guarantee. And maybe that's really what courage is, you know? Courage is behaving like your dream deserves a chance. Not behaving like you know it's going to work, not pretending you're not afraid, not convincing yourself that failure is impossible. No, just deciding that this thing that I want deserves a real chance. And I'm going to give it one. There's something I've been thinking about recently. Ever since the life, the woman I'm becoming deserves me moving with courage today. The woman I'm becoming deserves my courage. And I really, it was such an awakening moment and I'm holding that thought dear. Because sometimes when you're building something, the distance between where you are and where you want to be can feel

14:51eh. So enormous. So instead of constantly asking yourself how am I going to get all the way over there? And my dream is maybe the question you need to start asking is what does the woman I'm becoming need me to do today? Maybe she needs you to send one email. Maybe she needs you to save 5,000 shillings. Maybe she needs you to finally register the business. Maybe she needs you to research the course. Maybe she needs you to tell somebody about the idea. Maybe she needs you to write the first page. Maybe she needs you to ask for the meeting. Maybe she needs you to pitch to someone you think is completely out of your league. Maybe she needs you to make the prototype. Maybe she just needs you to google something. You've been too afraid to google because researching it would mean admitting

15:57that oh shit, I actually want this. So the dream can be enormous, but today's act of courage can be teeny winy, tiny and you've also got to give yourself evidence. And this is something I really want us to stop doing to ourselves. We tell ourselves I need to believe in myself more. Great, but sometimes your brain is like based on what? And very enough, you know, instead of demanding that you suddenly have this enormous amount of confidence, give yourself evidence. Do one thing. You say you are going to research it, research it, it's evidence. You said you'd send the email, send it, it's evidence. You said you'd save the money, save it, it's evidence. You said you'd make the call, make it. You said you'd apply, apply. You said you'd start, start. And then your relationship with yourself

17:01begins to change because now you have receipts. Now you have evidence. I say I would do something scary and I did it. So now what's the next scariest thing I can do? Because I know I have evidence that me, I can do scary things. And then what happens? You do another thing. And then another. And then another. And over time you start becoming somebody that you trust with your own dreams. Now, as I mentioned earlier, there's something else that we launched at for Man and Less Women Live. And if you were not there, we're going to share the news publicly really soon. But this thing has been in my head for almost three years. Three years, there was the idea. Then there was research. Oh my God, there was so much research. Then there was product development. Then there was figuring things out. Then changing things. Then some things failing. Then trying a new thing.

18:07Then waiting. Then trying again, Jesus. And then eventually this weekend, something that had been my dream for years, became something I could physically look at. And I think that's also important to talk about because we often see the dreams at the moment they become visible. You know what I mean? Like we see the launch, we see the announcement, sold out event, finished product, you know, somebody standing in the thing they've created. But we don't always see the incredibly unsexy middle. Hey, because dreams are romantic. But building them, hey, it's far from romantic. You know, sometimes pursuing your dreams looks like sending emails. Sometimes it looks like spreadsheets. Shits. I had to sit after such a wonderful life. I had to sit and open my inventory spreadsheet and balance numbers. Sometimes it looks like researching,

19:11packaging. Sometimes it looks like waiting for somebody to respond like right now as I'm recording this. My colleague is on standby. We're waiting for someone who we're partnering with to get back to us with changes to a contract. We're on edge waiting. Sometimes it looks like starting again. Sometimes months pass and there's no major breakthrough. You're just still building. You know, and this is also part of owning the dream. You know, through this unsexy bits, you've got to continue behaving as though this dream deserves to exist even when nobody else can see it yet. But you know, I love to leave you with practical things, right? And so I want you to think about one dream, just one. Just one dream, not the entire list of everything you want to do before you die. Just one thing. And I want you to ask yourself five questions. You can journal

20:17your answers to these questions. You can voice note them to yourself, but just answer them. Number one, what do I actually want? Not what sounds sensible, not what you think you should want, not what would impress other people or not what everybody else is doing. What do you want? And can you say it without immediately shrinking it? If you're journaling it, journaling it, write it without shrinking it. Number two, can I actually picture myself living it? What does your life look like when this thing is real? And again, don't just picture the highlight picture on ordinary Tuesday when you are waiting for an email to be responded to. You know what I mean? Put yourself inside that life fully. Number three, what scares me about admitting that I want this?

21:22Is it failure? Is it money? For me, it was mainly money, to be honest, still is. Is it judgment? Is it being seen, trying? Is it worrying that people will think you're delulu? Is it worrying that you'll outgrow people? Is it worrying that you'll become somebody you've never been before? What is actually underneath that hesitation? Number four, if I genuinely believed this dream belonged to me, what would I do differently? Would you finally tell someone? Would you start saving? Would you ask for help? Would you research it? Would you pitch? Would you stop talking yourself out of it? Journal, write that answer. And number five, the last question. What is one small act of courage I can take in the next seven days?

22:27Not how do I achieve the entire dream by Friday, please, please. Hear me correctly. What is one small act of courage I can take in the next seven days? Just one action. One little piece of evidence that says, I'm taking myself and my dream seriously. Answer the questions. I hope it doesn't make a difference. I hope it makes a difference for you. Owning your dream doesn't mean believing your guarantee to get it. There's so many things in life that we can't control. Things don't always work out simply because we wanted them badly enough. But I think there's a promise we can make to ourselves that is much more grounded. So I cannot promise myself that this will work, but I can promise myself that I will give this dream a real chance. I'll stop dismissing it before I've tried. I'll stop making myself smaller. I'll stop waiting for somebody else to tell me that I'm qualified to want the life I want.

23:30Because before your family believes it, before your friends understand it, before a brand invest in it, before an audience buys a ticket, before somebody buys this thing that you spent years creating, you have got to own it. And the woman you're becoming isn't asking you to know exactly how you're going to get there. She's just asking you to stop acting like the life you want belongs to somebody else. Your dream deserves a chance. And if you connected with this episode, share it with another woman who needs to hear this message. Thanks for listening to the Midwicties, a League of League of Legends Africa production. Episodes go out every Wednesday and you can learn more about us by going to leaguealliculusafrica.com.