Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Energetic Advantage, the podcast where energy isn't woo, it's your edge. I'm your host, Jessica Cerato. Intuitive strategist, lifelong pattern decoder, lover of numbers, and energetic guide for visionary leaders. Around. Here we go. Energy first, strategy second. Every episode will give you a perspective, a tool, or a timeline shift that helps you lead from your power.
Because the truth is your energy is your most undervalued asset. Until you learn how to use it, get ready. You're about to have the advantage. Let's begin.
Jessica: Okay, this one has taken me a while to record, , because every time I tried to talk about it, I just started crying. I'll tell you about it in a moment. And to be clear, I haven't not recorded it because I don't want you to hear me cry. Listen, I cry every day. people witness this all the time. It's nothing I'm embarrassed about.
But for a podcast, [00:01:00] I want you to be able to understand what I'm saying, and that is hard a lot of times when we speak through tears. So I was like, should I warn you to get tissues? I feel like this will activate in a beautiful way, at least I hope it will something in you, too. , So get ready, waterworks.
So I have something that happens in my body. This is an energetic advantage of mine, and it might be different for yours, but I guarantee you have something like it.
When something is really freaking true- When I know it with every ounce of my body, I cry. I call them truth tears And it's funny because when I'm working with clients, I have a different physical response to truth. I get what I call truth tingles. So someone will say something in a session or some, you know, or something will come through as we're talking, and all of a sudden, all the hairs on my arm will stand straight up.[00:02:00]
It is immediate. It's electric. My body knows. I'm like, "Oh, okay, there it is. That's true." But I've realized that when it's my truth, I don't get the tingles. I get tears, water. And actually, I'm, I'm laughing because I'm just realizing this actually in real time as I'm talking with you. When I was younger, I didn't differentiate.
When I heard someone else speak their truth or I witnessed truth in others, I... Oh, this is true because I'm starting to tear up. I cried. So as a young child, I did this quite often. , But I'm kind of laughing now in my work. I don't know how appropriate it would be for me to cry every time the CEO says something true.
And so I've taught or my body has found a different way to communicate that with me. But when I'm by myself, or I'm in a session or I'm communicating something, I get tears. And they're not sad tears, but they're not necessarily happy tears either. It's just almost like [00:03:00] recognition. Like something has landed so deeply in me that my body responds before my brain has even figured out what to do with it.
And the truest things are sometimes the hardest for me to talk about because I can't get the words out without crying. Which again, is so interesting because I've always thought that it was the emotion that was making it hard for me to articulate the truth. But maybe now I've realized I've had that backwards because maybe the emotion is not getting in the way of the truth.
Maybe the emotion is the evidence of the truth. These truth tears are what happens when my body recognizes, again, something my mind hasn't caught up to yet. And I had one of these moments, oh, wow, was it two weeks ago? Yeah. A thought came through, very simple at first, and immediately as I started to talk about it, because I was actually messaging in a Telegram app, , I started crying.
[00:04:00] And I was like, "Oh, this, this is it. This is something that I really wanna sit with." And here we go. Cue, cue the tears. Just like on this... Again, this just identifies that this is so true. But it will require you to open your mind to hear this perspective. Here is the thought. I don't want all of my dreams to come true
you've probably heard people say this all the time, "I hope all of your dreams come true. May all your dreams come true." It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful things we can wish for someone. But then all of a sudden, you know, I was sitting on the, the front lawn of the cabin where we were at, staring at the water, and I was like, "Wait, I, I don't want that.
I, I don't want all of my dreams to come true." Because if every single dream I have [00:05:00] has already come true or comes true, that means I don't have any dreams left And that, apparently my body has a lot to say about that. Because what I realized in that moment and now in the time after, is that I don't ever wanna live a life without dreams.
I don't want to get to some point where I can look around and say, "Yep, that's it. Everything I've ever imagined has happened. Nothing left out here." I want dreams ahead of me, always. I want there to be something I haven't done, something I haven't seen, somewhere I haven't been, something I haven't created, some version of myself that I haven't met yet.
I want to be 70 years old and still think, "Oh gosh, wouldn't that be incredible?" I want to be 90 years old and having, and have something somewhere out on the horizon For me [00:06:00] to keep dreaming about in this life. And it made me wonder, you know, what if we've misunderstood what dreams are actually for? What if the purpose of a dream isn't simply to come true?
What if the purpose of a dream is to keep us in relationship with possibility? Because what is a dream? Okay, so let's talk about it. A dream is something that you can imagine before you can touch it. It's an imagined reality that doesn't exist yet, which is kind of incredible, right? We have this ability as human beings to look beyond the evidence of our current lives and see something that isn't here yet, and that's dreaming.
And there is something incredibly energetic about that because the second that you can imagine something beyond your current reality, you have created a relationship between where you are and where you could be. There's a space [00:07:00] between the two. There's a gap, and we are taught to close that gap as quickly as possible.
I am here. My dream is there. How do I get there? What's the strategy? What's the timeline? What are the steps? How do I, quote unquote, "manifest that"? How do I make it happen faster? How do I collapse the timeline? And listen, I am a strategist. Yes, I love knowing where we're going. I love looking at timing and energy and making decisions about where to place our attention.
But I started to wonder on that morning when this thought came through, what if the gap isn't the problem? What if the gap is where the magic lives? What if the distance between where I am and what I can imagine is creating something important? Desire, curiosity, anticipation, creativity, life force.
Because if I can see something from here that I haven't experienced [00:08:00] yet, something in me starts moving towards it. Close my eyes and make a wish on every birthday cake, right? It's not frantic. It's not because where I am isn't good enough. It's simply because I can see it. The dream creates movement, and maybe we need that movement more than we need the destination You know, I wanna put a disclaimer here that dreams are not the same things as goals, and, and I think that's an important distinction.
You know, I love a goal. Goals are useful. A goal can have a date. A goal can have a number. It can have a checklist. It can be measured. You know, it can be SMART, SMART goals. And most importantly, a goal can be completed. You can say, "I did it," and put a beautiful little check mark besides it. But dreams feel very different to me.
a goal wants completion, but a dream wants [00:09:00] expansion. A goal asks, "How do I get there?" But a dream asks, "What else might be possible?" , And sometimes a dream becomes a goal, or a dream becomes, you know, a, a checklist of goals. Of course it does, right? You dream about writing a book, and eventually you decide you're going to write the book, and then you have a deadline for the editors, a publication date.
Like, I'm going to write 10 pages a day." Goals. You dream about moving somewhere, and eventually you're looking at houses. You set a goal for how much money you want to save, I don't know, or the day that you wanna talk to the realtor. You dream about building a company, and one day there are actual documents and bank accounts and employees and a million things that you knew...
You never knew you were going to know. The dream starts to become physical. And yes, then you attach goals to that physicality. But [00:10:00] that's not the only value of the dream, because dreams do something to us before they ever become real. They expand the edges of what we believe is possible. And you know, maybe it was because I was looking out over the lake, the, the metaphor came to me as I was sitting with this thought.
I, I thought about the horizon, and maybe dreams are more like horizons. So you can see a horizon, you can walk towards it, you can sail towards it, you can orient yourself by it, but you never actually arrive at the horizon because every time you move, the horizon moves, too. And we don't consider that a problem.
Nobody is standing, you know, down at the beach being like, "The horizon is a scam." You know, we don't walk 10K and say, "Okay, apparently I failed. Still haven't reached the horizon." Like, we understand what a horizon is. It gives us direction without requiring arrival, and maybe some dreams are [00:11:00] like that. You move towards them, and as you move, your vantage point changes.
You can see things from here that you couldn't see from back there, and then you move again, and suddenly there's another possibility on the horizon, and another. Which means that every dream you move towards gives you a new vantage point from which you can dream again, and that feels just really significant to me because there are dreams available to you 10 years from now that you literally cannot dream today.
You don't even know that they exist yet, and I don't mean because you're limiting yourself. I'm not saying dream bigger. I mean, you genuinely cannot see or feel them from here because you haven't had the experiences yet. You haven't met the people. You haven't gone through the heartbreak. You haven't had the success.
You haven't changed your mind. You haven't taken the risk. You haven't learned the thing. You haven't become the version of yourself who will someday stand somewhere completely different and look out at a completely different [00:12:00] horizon. You cannot dream from a vantage point you haven't reached yet
Because imagine if 10 years ago someone had asked you to write down every single thing that you would want for the rest of your life. Could you have? Of course not. And this is making me so emotional because thank goodness if 10 years ago I had to write down everything that I would ever want for the rest of my life Some of the things that I love most about my life today were not available in my imagination then
Including one of my freaking kids.
And if that's true looking backwards, if I ask you that question and you're like, "Oh my gosh, yes," it has to be [00:13:00] true looking forward. There are things coming that you don't know enough to want yet. There are dreams you haven't met yet. And this just, you know, makes manifestation, and I'm gonna use air quotes around that word because I feel the word should be more like materialization, but I'll use manifestation because I think that's what everyone says, and it- it'll bring a little bit more of a context to this.
You know, we- you hear so much talk about making our dreams come true. Manifest the house, manifest the relationship, manifest... Like, manifest anything, right? And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I think that we've turned manifestation into acquisition. Like, I want the thing, I get the thing.
Success, next. And it's like we're trying to empty our dream inventory as quickly as possible. But what [00:14:00] if manifestation is actually a relationship with creation? You dream something, you move towards it, you make decisions because of it, you become someone in the pursuit of it. Maybe it comes true, and now you're standing somewhere you have never stood before, which means you can see something you have never seen before, and suddenly there's another dream.
So maybe the process is actually dream, movement, experience, expansion, new vantage point, new dream, and it repeats. But it doesn't do that because we're never satisfied. It's because we're alive, literally. And, you know, I also thought about it from this perspective. Some dreams aren't supposed to come true, and I think this matters too.
Because if we are going to stop treating dreams like this list that we are supposed to complete, then we also have to make room for the dreams [00:15:00] that, quote unquote, "don't happen." And there are things that I have dreamed about that I no longer want. And I will not share them with you here today. I will just say thank God, goodness, the whole entire universe, that some of my dreams did not come true.
Because the person who dreamed them isn't the person I am anymore. And, you know, some dreams come true exactly as we imagined. Some become something better. Some change shape. Some disappear. , Some turned out to be like someone else's dream that we maybe accidentally picked up along the way, and some dreams just get us moving far enough along to discover what we actually wanted in the first place.
You know, let's bring some tangible examples to this, 'cause you know I love to do this. Okay, maybe your dream was the job, the [00:16:00] dream job. I mean, how many times have you heard that? So maybe you thought you wanted the dream job, and pursuing it actually showed you what you really wanted was freedom.
You know, maybe you wanted the big, giant business, and building towards it showed you what you actually wanted was impact without complexity. Here's a big one. Maybe you thought you wanted the relationship And losing it or not having it has actually taught you something about the relationship that you actually want with yourself.
The original dream didn't come true, but that doesn't necessarily mean it failed I think the dream did its job. It got you moving. It made you ask a question. It brought you into a room. It introduced you to someone. It showed you what you did not want, and it showed you what you did. It moved you to a vantage point you wouldn't have reached otherwise, and then you could see something [00:17:00] else.
You know, maybe dreams don't always owe us the ending that we imagined. Maybe their job is to simply lead us somewhere new I also think we've made wanting something Mean something it doesn't mean. And this one feels important because I think especially in the in the spiritual or personal development world, we've created this weird tension between desire and gratitude. Like, if I really love my life, should it be enough? Like, if I'm grateful, why do I still want something else?
If I'm present, shouldn't I stop looking ahead? And if I'm spiritually evolved enough, whatever that means, shouldn't I just be completely content with what is? I don't buy that. I think you can stand in the middle of a life that you absolutely love and still dream. You can adore your family [00:18:00] and dream about what's next for you.
You can love your business and be so grateful for it, and dream about what it could become. You could be so grateful for your home and dream about another place. You can celebrate what you have created and still wonder what else you're capable of. These things aren't contradictions. Wanting more doesn't automatically mean that what you have isn't enough.
Because dreaming doesn't have to mean this life isn't enough for me. Dreaming can mean there is still more of me that wants to be expressed. There are still parts of me I haven't met. There are still ideas I haven't had. There are places I haven't stood. There are still ways that I have not loved. There are still things that I have not created.
There are still moments I haven't experienced, and I want to stay [00:19:00] available for them And maybe this is why children dream so beautifully. I mean, children are incredible dreamers. , Ask a kid what they want to do, and they will tell you like a veterinarian police officer unicorn trainer, right? They don't immediately run a feasibility analysis.
They don't ask whether the market for that is saturated or check or if someone else is already doing it. , They don't need evidence that it's possible before they're willing to imagine it. They just dream. And then we grow up, and then somewhere along that path, we start requiring evidence before imagination.
As soon as a dream comes in, we start asking, "Well, is that realistic? How would I do it? Could I afford it? What if that doesn't work? What will people think? Is it too late?" And sure, those can be useful questions eventually for goals. But I wonder how many dreams die because we [00:20:00] ask practical questions too early before the dream has even had a chance to breathe.
So maybe the energetic practice isn't finding out how. Maybe it's simply allowing yourself to say, "Wow, like, wouldn't that be incredible?" And leaving it there. No plan, no strategy, no manifestation ritual, no vision board, just, " Wow, wouldn't that be incredible?" Because the second that you allow yourself to imagine it, you've already expanded your relationship with what's possible And so I don't want to finish dreaming.
I've been thinking differently about that phrase that I started with now, , "May all your dreams come true." Sure, it's beautiful, I know, you know, what people mean when they say it, but I don't think that's what I want anymore. I don't want every dream to come true. Sure, I want some of them to come [00:21:00] true.
I want some of them to completely surprise me. I want some of my dreams to change shape. I would love for some of my dreams to lead me somewhere I never expected to go. I want to outgrow some of my dreams. I want to laugh someday at the things I once thought that I desperately wanted I want to achieve something that I dreamed about for years and then discover that the view from there shows me an entirely new horizon
I want dreams that I know how to make happen, and I want dreams that make absolutely no freaking sense yet. I want dreams that become plans and goals, and I also want dreams that stay dreams for a while
I want dreams so far ahead of me that I don't yet know [00:22:00] the version of me who gets to live them. Because, you know, maybe a beautiful life isn't one where you've eventually checked every box. Maybe it's the one where every box that you check reveals another part of the map, and I don't wanna reach the end of the map.
I want life to keep showing me territory I didn't know existed. So I have a different blessing for you today. I don't hope that all of your dreams come true I hope some of your dreams do come true, and I hope some of them don't. I hope some become irrelevant because you outgrow them, and I hope some take so long that the person who finally receives them barely recognizes the person who first dreamed them.
I hope some dreams crack you open
I hope that some dreams make you [00:23:00] brave. I hope that some dreams simply make Tuesday morning feel more interesting because there's something out there that makes you think, maybe. I hope the dreams that come true introduce you to dreams that you didn't know you had, and I hope you never confuse gratitude with being finished.
I hope that you can love your life deeply without deciding that loving it means that you have to stop imagining more. And whether you're 30 years old or 50 or 70 or 90, I hope there's always something somewhere on the horizon that makes your heart beat a little faster, something that makes you pause and think, "Ugh, wouldn't that be incredible?"
Because I don't want all of my dreams to come true. I want my dreams to keep getting bigger than the life I can currently [00:24:00] see.
And more than anything, may some of my dreams always be ahead of me, and may some of yours always be ahead of you too
We made it through. Whoa. And with that, I will end today's discussion in gratitude for you to open your mind to this and see how it feels for you. As always, you know, my goal with this podcast is to bring your energetic advantage to the forefront. And, you know, one of the biggest energetic advantages you have is your ability to dream.
So keep dreaming, and I will see you next time.
Outro: Thanks for being here inside The Energetic Advantage. If today's episode open something for you, share it, tag it, or send to the person who popped into your mind. And remember, [00:25:00] energy first strategy second. Your advantage has always been in you. Now it's time to lead with it. See you next time.
