Discovering and Pursuing God-Sized Dreams (and I reveal one of mine)

086. Ever been struck by a dream so big it felt divine, but found it completely at odds with your current reality? That was the pivotal moment of my life. A God-sized dream demanded a seismic shift in my actions, my lifestyle, and my understanding of the life I was living. Join me as I peel back the layers, revealing for the first time the mammoth dream(s) I've been nurturing. We’ll traverse the fascinating journey of dreaming and its potent influence on our choices and destinies.

The exploration doesn't end there. We'll explore the correlation between grand dreams and the discovery of our life's purpose.

I also reveal one of my own GSDs (God-Sized-Dreams) which is hiding in the form of a puppet. (I'm trying not to give a spoiler).

This episode does not shy away from the tough realities of altering life's course, the challenge of being creative in a niche world, and the art of making thoughtful yet powerful changes.

Whether your dreams feel larger than life or seem to have been side-lined, this conversation is going to get you motivated to start thinking about your ideas and dreams in a bigger more impactful way!

✷ Watch Missy May's first Video→https://youtu.be/bsCGFJuu4qo

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✷ Website → https://marijanel.com/

✷ Companion YouTube Video → https://youtu.be/hi-lAruDy7s

✷ Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/marijanel/

✷ Support the Show → https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marijanel

✷ Music → https://www.epidemicsound.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Do you have a God-sized dream that is so big you feel like you're carrying eternity around in your heart and it's gonna explode in a million directions and you don't know where to focus, to even begin to pursue your dream. You don't even know how to niche down, as they say. Or maybe you're the opposite, where you feel like you haven't been dreaming enough, like your dreams have been minimized, diminished, shoved in a corner, stepped over through your life and you wish you could have a God-sized dream. Either way, today's podcast is for you. Let's get to it. So today I'm talking about God-sized dreams. I'm gonna share a little bit about my own story of coming face to face with my God-sized dream and the reality that it wasn't even in the realm I was currently focused in and that I was gonna have to make a big shift. That was an uh-oh kind of moment. I'm also gonna reveal to you a God-sized dream that I've been keeping a little bit of a secret. It's been on the down low and you're gonna think, oh, marriage. And now, what have you got up your sleeve right now, and I've given you hints along the way through this podcast, but today I'm gonna reveal to you what it is, simply for the sake of confessing it, because I believe that putting our dreams out there, confessing them to people we love and trust and for me today that's you it makes it more real, like the first step in the vulnerability of letting that big dream come to pass. I'm also gonna talk about some shifting seasons and being able to flow with the shifting seasons and the peace. I've learned about niching, because niching is very hard for people like me. You don't have to be an entrepreneur or a creative to enjoy what I'm about to tell you, but I have a feeling, if you're here and you've followed me this far, you have a creative bone or two in your body, because I talk often about all things creative, including following our intuition, listening to our gut and knowing ourselves in a way that leads to the freedom of creativity. So let me start with a story Rewind.

Speaker 1: 2:16

About two years ago I was in a business group and it was an amazing group. I got so much out of it. But there was a challenge, a directive given to us in the group where we were to define our B-hag for our business. So I was in the group with a very specific business purpose brand and, you know, supposed to have a goal and we were given a directive homework to define our B-hag. If you're unfamiliar with what a B-hag is, it's the acronyms for big, hairy, audacious goal. So essentially, what is a goal so humongous, full of dream and purpose that you could have for your business, slash life? And I was excited about this homework because that's right up my alley.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Mary Janelle loves to dream. I wake up every day with new ideas. Thank God I don't pursue them all, but I was just like really pumped up about this B-hag homework and I got out my journal and all my like business plan notes and new ideas and I sat down to define my B-hag. And it's like I hit a wall, like a completely dark room, and I had no vision for my B-hag. No vision. I was just stumped and I gave myself the time and space there to just really think like what is wrong? Why are you experiencing this blocker, mary Janelle? Why can't you think of this big dream for your business?

Speaker 1: 3:54

And I allowed myself to start to dream about whatever it is that could come to me and, interestingly, the dreams that were arising in my heart that day, that I would consider a B-hag or a God-sized dream, were in a totally different realm than where I was actually working or supposed to be focused in my business in that season and I allowed myself for I think might have been about a two hour dreaming session, to just sit there and like let my mind wander and really dream big and it had nothing to do with what I was supposed to be doing and that was a bit scary. It was liberating, but a bit scary because did it mean I was doing something in my life that I shouldn't be doing and my true dreams and purposes were actually over here? Or did it mean that I was doing what I was meant to be doing and I just have to learn to like harness the big vision and bring it into the realm? I, you know, like I don't know. I could split that hair 500 different ways, but what did happen was that I came face to face that day with the fact that I had god-sized dreams that were in a completely different realm of life than where the season that I was in and I needed to figure out what to do about that. And everyone, if they come face to face with that, is going to handle it in their own personal way, in the way that your temperament, your personality would lean.

Speaker 1: 5:37

For me, I needed to stop what I was doing, or at least halt it and slow it down, and it is part of the catalyst of what led me to start this podcast. So in fact, you're seeing today in me through the podcast, my mentorship programs and my illustrative work, my work as a storyteller and illustrator, where I create whimsical critters and imaginary lands. All of that was connected to the god-sized dreams that woke up today. So that day in my dreaming session, I came face to face with a hard reality that my god-sized dream in this realm wasn't aligning to my actions and what I was doing in the season, the current season of my life, and I had to make some changes rather than just halt everything. I just slowly started to shift and this would be a little negative encouragement to you that, if you know there's something in your life that's not aligned, it is possible to shift the seasons, to allow things to gradually change over, and you have to be thoughtful, intentional and intuitive about doing that, which is something we all can do as creatives.

Speaker 1: 7:02

But I saw a gaping void in my life where I'd really let a lot of other business ideas and focuses take over and it was diminishing and putting aside my god-sized dream of illustration and children's storybooks and, in fact, producing a children's show, which I want to tell you about in just a minute. I will reveal the mysteries, but you may have heard me say through the years that I have had a difficult time embracing my role and niche as an illustrator, and that is true. But the part of the difficulty of niching down and perhaps being known as illustrator was the fact that as an artist, as a multi-form artist, I do so much more than just illustrate. It was hard to put one word on me as a label and I've never been a fan of labels which has made it hard to hold all these god-sized dreams, because when you share your dream with somebody, they kind of want a label. They're like what is that dream? Oh, it's this, and they want it defined. And yet dreams don't define themselves like that. They're big and the magnitude is like if you looked up into the sky and you can't even count the stars. That's how the bigness, the grandeur of dreams feel. And so how could I bring all that down from heaven and tie it into one tiny word called, or action, called illustrate or write or produce. That was so hard for me to do, which is one of the number one reasons why creative people find it hard to niche down, is because of the magnitude of our dreams, the diversity of our talents, the way that our I won't call my octopus arms stretch out wide and we do an array of things and it's hard to narrow that down and give it one label, and yet it is important. In the business world it's a best practice to niche and I had a really hard time harnessing my God size dreams and bringing them into a niche and I have.

Speaker 1: 9:17

I can tell you this I found a lot of peace in a saying. I don't know which guru out there said it first. I didn't say it first, but I found it somewhere and it's this niche for now. We don't need our niche or the label or the bio that goes on our website to define us forever more. It's a season, it's a time and a niche for now. So when I was in music, I was known as a musician and it was my niche and a purpose and focus there. And then I shifted into visual arts and I niche in photography and once in photography I niche down even more into weddings and specifically got known for that. Then another shift in season change came and my hands were in the clay and I was sculpting and doing pottery and I niched within that to be known oh, you're that potter who makes those pieces with all the branchy sculptures and really earthy organic textures. And I got known and niched for that. And then as a podcaster if you would have seen my website a year ago, which many of you did it had the brand of being a podcaster all over it I was niched for now and the seasons have shifted and changed once again, awaking parts of the God-sized dreams to embrace something different that was dormant for a period of time.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Remember how, a couple weeks ago, I shared with you about the storybook Weight Darling Weight that I've released my first debut kids book about a little chicken sitting on her nest and the animals on the sunny farm discover patience and positivity with chicken's big surprise I wonder if you can guess what the surprise is and I shared with you the story of how I wasn't ready to release this book and I needed to wait. And it is, in fact, the story of the book actually, which is kind of cool. The author went through the whole story and it's really authentic, genuine story. Okay so, just as a quick intermission to today's show, I want to remind you all that my children's storybook Weight, darling Weight, is available on Amazon and all the links are found below. You can also type in my name Mary Janelma. You are gonna love this precious book. This is my gift to the world, a story that I know you're gonna want to read with the child in your life. Let's get on with the show.

Speaker 1: 11:48

The moral of me sharing that sliver of the story is that I needed to wait for the season. I needed to shift with the time, and sometimes we feel the shift coming because our God-sized dreams shift within us, or that we allow ourselves to even dream and find out our actions aren't aligned with the dream. And so that day, rewinding to the story I was telling you about being given the directive of finding my B-hag, I didn't have a B-hag and I started to dream in a completely different realm. What was the realm? The realm was developing my character, missy May Hedgehog Many of you who follow Instagram, you might be familiar with my little character, missy May and I began to dream big about this. It just opened up in my heart into something huge, so big. I didn't even know the first steps I should take. I didn't know what direction to aim or even how to niche, but I've known and I've carried with me the knowing and sense that I need to act upon this GSD, this God-sized dream.

Speaker 1: 13:10

And so today, for the first time on my podcast here on YouTube, I want to introduce to you Missy May Hedgehog. For those who are listening on audio, just imagine this she's super cute and she's a hand puppet. And here she comes for the first time on the Marriage Nails Show. It's Missy May Hedgehog, and isn't she adorable? My friend Melissa was commissioned to make her and she is felted by hand, absolutely precious, and I love her to pieces and I think that children are going to love her too and I want her to come to life. She's not going to talk today because her voice is still developing and you all know that I'm very passionate about developing our voice and message and Missy's working on hers. But you can see how beautiful she is and the dream that within her I have, the dream surrounding her. I should say I've been taking the intentional steps to make it happen. The intentional steps by number one developing her character as I illustrate and dream stories and then having Melissa create her as a puppet for me, and we've created an entire world that I'm not ready to reveal yet, but her entire puppet stage is in production, kind of like three quarters of the way done and I will share it soon enough.

Speaker 1: 14:39

Thanks for being on the show, missy. What a perfect guest. I wanted to share with you the God size dream because I believe in taking the steps of vulnerability to share with trusted people, in a trusted way, what our dreams really are. Who could you trust with the vulnerable definition of your dream, like going to someone and saying I have a dream that I need to tell someone and that could even be messaging me. I'm totally open to that. But I want you to actively engage in your God size dreams, to have them there and to figure them out, to.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Sometimes dreams are okay to just let it be a dream that is valid too but other times they are connected to our destiny and calling.

Speaker 1: 15:34

They are put there by our creator to prompt us to leave a mark in the world, and so that's what I feel like my role is as a mentor is to lead by example through all the hard things I go through figuring out the life of creativity and following the path of faith. I feel that I'm to stir it up in you and challenge you to take a look at these things and to truly consider the impact you can make in your lifetime. Thank you for joining me on the show. All my links are below. I'm so thankful you're here and that you stuck around listening to me talk about God's eyes, dreams, be hags, seasons shifting, and just telling you the stories of my life and the fact that you got to meet Missy May Hedgehog and share, in the beginning, the reveal of that dream, because I'm super excited where it could go someday and you've been here at the very start of it. So, thank you, until next time. Keep on in the full potential of you.