The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

March 6In Dreams

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream, than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which is our atonement, measures the degree by which this is separated from an actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could discover some waking consent thereto. If this meanness had not its foundation in us, why are we grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.

Henry David Thoreau—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

Dreams are a tricky topic for entrepreneurs. We are encouraged to dream bigger, but as Thoreau suggests, it is often our fears and failures that appear in our actual dreams at night.

But there also lies some truth, or at least perceived truth, in the things that haunt us most. Our reaction to insults or slights by others often reveals a seed of truth or—let's face it—a full-blown blind spot, if we would allow ourselves to learn from them.

So what are our dreams here to tell us? And no, not the one where you can't remember your locker combination sophomore year in high school.

Dreams could be here to show us that we are in charge of them if we choose to craft them intentionally. Thoreau also said, “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

Today, take 15 ...