One of my favorite movies of all time is Napoleon Dynamite.
One of my favorite lines from that movie is "Vote for Pedro."
If you've never watched Napoleon Dynamite or if it's been a while, check it out on one of the streaming channels. It's truly a wonderful, heartwarming, campy, strange, beautiful film.
This morning, as I was reading, and writing, and studying, I got to thinking about Pedro who becomes Napoleon Dynamite's best friend, and considers running for class president against Summer Wheatley, the popular blonde cheerleader girl who everyone expects will win the election. Pedro is a nerd and an outsider. He’s teased and ridiculed just like several of the other nerdy characters in the film. He is not the obvious choice for class president and has his doubts about going through with running.
Without spoiling the story, I will share that Pedro ultimately decides to run for class president on a campaign promise that when you vote for Pedro, all your wildest dreams will come true.
That's a powerful promise, isn't it?
All of Your Wildest Dreams Will Come True
After watching the movie again, I got to thinking about that promise with respect to my own life, specifically the times when that promise was dangled in front of me. I'm not sure if I was ever conscious of that promise. Although it was certainly implied. And I made decisions about my life based on its implications.
For example -- the promise of all my wildest dreams coming true was implied in me getting good grades, graduating high school, being a good girl. Then going on to four year university, getting a degree, and eventually getting my master's in teaching.
It was implied in getting married and having a family and settling down in the suburbs with two dogs and an SUV. Spending spring break each year in Key West, or San Diego, or Palm Desert.
That promise was certainly implied that if I followed in my father’s footsteps as a high school teacher, and worked the same job in the same school district in the same position for 41 years, I would be guaranteed a safe and decent life with a pension and health insurance.
At one point, I believed that path was my destiny, too. When I was 25 years old, I started my career in teaching English at a prestigious public high school in the state of Oregon. I loved my job. I loved working with high school kids. I loved the content I was teaching.
But I also had bigger dreams, including being a stay at home mom for a while, the way my mother had been with me and my brother. I dreamed about becoming a published author. I dreamed about pursuing my creative ideas through entrepreneurship.
But because of the way the promise of all my wildest dreams coming true was presented to me, I missed out on all the other ways my wildest dreams could come true.
And therein lies the problem.
Wildest Dreams
I was a big dreamer as a girl. I can remember writing about my dreams in school, and talking about my dreams with other girls at sleepovers. We each wove an elaborate tale of where our lives would go and what they would look like when we were all grown up and out in the world on our own.
And we all grew up. And some of our dreams did come true, but I'll be the first to admit -- the older and more established I became in someone else’s idea of a dream life, the less I dreamed big for myself.
About ten years ago I realized I had stopped dreaming. I couldn't even identify a wildest dream anymore. That’s when I decided to do something about it. Through self-study and the guidance of some outstanding coaches, I have since been unraveling old belief systems that have held me and my big wildest dreams hostage for far too long.
Those beliefs are known as...
Dream Killers
Through my studies and coaching, I’ve become acutely aware of the beliefs aka dream killers I've allowed to dictate my life. One of the biggest culprits can be found in messages I heard growing up about money, how it doesn’t grow on trees and you have to make every penny count.
And you need money to make your wildest dreams come true, so you can see where that got me.
Another message was about being careful about what you wish for because you just might get it.
Boy, did I hear that one a lot.
Be careful about what you wish for because you just might get it.
OMG, what a horrible thing to do, right? Dare to wish for things? Dare to dream big?
As my ten year old self, dare to dream about living in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan with gorgeous custom furniture and fluffy white rugs and dinner parties every Saturday night and a closet full of beautiful clothes and a view to beat the band?
Ya, it'd be tragic if that came true, right?
Ugh.
Beliefs Impact Our Dreams
So many messages like that one are loaded with glaring contradictions.
On the one hand, the message says you gotta go for it because you’re a loser if you don’t. On the other hand, the message also says be careful when you do go for it because you just might get what you want and if what you want turns out to be not what you want, then...
You see where this can spiral out of control.
Many, many people face this dilemma. Oftentimes, unconsciously. We don't even realize we are fighting this fight with ourselves. It isn't until something happens in our life, or we begin to search and discover that there is another way, there's actually more than another way, there are lots of different ways for all our wildest dreams to come true.
Vote for Pedro and all your wildest dreams will come true.
Make a choice that isn’t obvious or popular. The obvious choice, the safe choice, the familiar choice is voting for the popular girl. Feeling good about the superficial promises she makes, including putting lip balm and lip gloss dispensers in all the girls rooms.
When we think about that promise of all your wildest dreams coming true if you step outside of what everyone else is doing, or promoting…
That's powerful.
Vote for Pedro
I actually have people in my life who, when I ask them how it's going today, they say, “Living the dream.”
Dripping in sarcasm.
When I hear that answer I think to myself, "Wow man, really? Really?"
You don’t have to dig down too far below that comment and its tone to find a lot of pain and disappointment and unmet expectations and unfulfilled dreams.
To find people who have stopped dreaming.
Are you allowing yourself to dream big?
Are you "voting for Pedro" in your life right now?
I encourage you to take some time, today and in the coming week, to dig into your own life and find the places where the sentiment behind that promise has played a role in the decisions you've made.
How many of those decisions were intentional and conscious on your part because you were going for a big dream?
How many of them were simply toeing the line of how everybody else has done it? You saw their life and unconsciously associated it with their dream and thought, "Well, they’re living the dream. It can't be that bad."
Part of answering the call to leadership is developing an awareness about the decisions we make and the dreams we pursue.
Part of leading is giving ourselves permission to step into the far unlit unknown of big dreams even though we don't know what awaits us there.
Because that's the only place all of our wildest dreams will come true.
It may be scary to step away from what's known into the unknown, but are more lip gloss dispensers in your life really what you want?
Vote for Pedro.
