Dreams of Failure

For the past several nights, I have been having dreams that take me through each time I have "failed" in my life. Let me give you some examples...

In one of my dreams, I was 7 years old again and on the soccer field, playing in a game. My coach pulled me out, and told me that I wasn't good enough. This isn't EXACTLY what happened, but it's close. I was not the best soccer player- I admit that. But that shouldn't matter when you're 7. However, during one of our games I was pulled out for several minutes while another girl subbed for me. Another teammate was pulled out shortly after me. I sat there ready to play again, while she sat there out of breath and tired. But when one of our other teammates had to come out, my coach picked the other girl over me, even though I had been sitting out for a while and she had just come out.

A third dream was that I was in line to be president of my sorority, and all the girls were voting and I didn't get it. This IS what happened in real life.

Yet another dream was getting a phone call that I didn't get the job at Mercy as the alumnae director. Again, this did actually happen in real life.

Those are just a few examples. At first, I was angry. I didn't understand why by subconscious was being so cruel and bringing these memories back to real life for me. Those are things I would rather forget, and although some of them seem small, at the time each of them crushed me and made me question my capabilities and talents. In sum, each of these incidences took a giant stab at my self esteem.

When I was talking to Tom about these dreams, though, he put a different twist on it. His thought is that maybe my sub conscious is showing me these things to show me how far I have come, or to show me that I have made it through each of these hardships, I can surely continue to push through the ones in front of me now. Tom's perspective gave me hope and confidence to know that I AM a strong person and that even though there are a million things happening to me right now and I am feeling like I am not good enough or strong enough to overcome them, I CAN and I WILL because I have before.

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” 
― Maya Angelou