(This is a page from the Dream Lab playbook (Dream Lab: Explore The Miracle of your Dream is one of the classes you get in Dream Book.)

Today my dream shows up as a bird in a cage.

The cage feels heavy and rough, like I could cut myself just trying to touch it.

My dream is small and sad, trapped inside.

Or is it that I'm sad, seeing my dream trapped in there?

Well I feel hopeless about it. Like there is no way to get that bird out of that cage. The lock is rusted over and I don't have the key anyway.

So this is depressing.

Sometimes you meet with your dream and this is what it feels like. And it's easy to think you're doing it wrong or that this process is stupid and pointless.

But none of that is true. It's just that I feel hopeless about this right now.

We all feel hopeless about our dreams sometimes. Just like we all feel happy, excited, terrified, confident and totally un-sure about our dreams sometimes.

Feelings are fluid.

When we try to control our feelings, when we judge some feelings as good and others as bad - then we close ourselves off from the power and wisdom in our feelings.

We close ourselves off from our own inner wisdom. And so that's why a big part of this work is to explore how you feel when you meet your dream.

You'll find there is usually a gift, healing or lesson in those explorations.

Why do I feel hopeless about my dream today? Where is the gift in my hopelessness?

When I look more closely at the hopelessness, it shows up as a sad looking rag doll, just hanging there.

Hmmm. Hanging there, really?

I zoom out a bit and see that the rag doll is hanging from the hand of a sad younger me.

I offer my inner child love and comfort. I see how sad and hopeless she feels about this dream. It feels soothing to offer her love and comfort.

But how does this help me with my dream?

And then the girl whispers to me "I don't think you should go after this because of how much it would hurt if you fail" I give the girl a hug and suddenly I really feel different.

In my wish to comfort her of course I put myself into the position of trusting my dream and trusting myself. "Oh sweetie. We don't want to live that life where we cower afraid of our own dreams! We want to be brave! We want to take risks and trust ourselves to handle whatever happens."

I mean there isn't a way to control what happens in life anyway. We can only control how we show up in our lives.

And I want to be the person who shows up and takes their dreams seriously.

Isn't that funny?

In exploring hopelessness I ended up activating trust and inspiration. And then I was able to stop feeling hopeless and just get back to work on my dream.

That's always the end goal with this inner work - to put yourself into a position where you can get to work on your dream.