Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 125: All Due Respect

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

"Probably no greater honor can come to any man than the respect of his colleagues." - Cary Grant https://theresilientcareer.com/

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend, Dr. Helen Ofosu, from Ottawa, Canada. We're going to get right back to her in just a moment. If you would, please, like, share, subscribe, tell your friends. Always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the video game streams I do nightly at 5 p.m. And 16, currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent dreams in their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson available now. You can get all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com.

complete list of all 16 available books, encyclopedia of dream people and concepts, downloadable MP3 versions of this podcast, et cetera, et cetera. That's enough shilling for me. Dr. Ophosu, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I was intrigued by your title, the Dream Wizard. Thank you very much. It is, as I said off air, and, you know, there's no licensure currently for being a wizard. So we'll see if that remains. I forgot to give your Mother of Dragons titles. Our friend Helen here is an author, executive coach, HR consultant, and she's got videos up on YouTube, so officially a YouTuber for what that's worth.

And you can find her material at the resilientcareer.com link in the description. I figure that's a good place to start. I mean, you've got a book, so we could talk about that or how you came to be in this position. Wherever you want to start, it's fine with me. Sure. Well, in February, 2023, I have my very first book published. Maybe I'll pull it up.

I've got a copy on my desk. Right. I keep forgetting to have mine handy and wave it around too. That's the perfect thing to do. We are getting a little stuttery frame rate on your end. There's nothing you can do about it or me, but so folks know.

Anyway, go ahead. I think it's because of the freezing rain we're getting here in Ottawa today, even though it's April. Oh, yeah. Isn't that funny? They say, you know, April showers bring May flowers, but what do you do when it's snowing,

sleet and freezing rain in April? Well, tomorrow will be nice and warm, so I'm sure this will be a memory soon. Right, yeah. I'm not looking forward to, you know, 90 degree heat, but I'm also, I'm over the cold and the wet right now.

It's funny. You live in Portland. It's like, really, you don't like the rain and the wet and you live in Portland? What are you doing to yourself? Anyway, some of us just, we are where we are. Yeah, so summer 2020, I joined a business mastermind, and one of the guest speakers you came was a book agent. And it was really only at that moment that I started thinking, oh, my goodness, all the things she's saying, things that I'm kind of doing, maybe I could have a book that followed up with her. and she focuses mostly on memoirs and fiction.

So she made an introduction to somebody who's more in the business lane, spoke to him and he said, yeah, we should work together. And I think from October 2020 until June or July 2021, he basically came up with the concept. I knew I had some training materials. I had some ideas. I had some blog content. So I went from zero to 90 pretty quickly.

And in the summertime of 2021, I had a full manuscript, and we basically created all the different parts that we assumed publisher might want. So chapter summaries, table of contents, entire manuscript. Someone said, send me one chapter, we knew which one. Someone said three chapters, we knew which three. and basically submitted a bunch of proposals. I had an awful lot of noes before we got a yes. So here we are.

That's one of the reasons I went the kind of the Amazon Kindle direct self-publishing route with my stuff. I just skip all that stuff and just put it out there. And a lot of what I'm reproducing, our public domain works because they are historical documents from the 1920s, 1900s, 1800s, et cetera, trying to capture creating as I say my own masterclass in in the understanding or the historical understanding of dreams and the process of making sense of them so but it sounds like you went the more normal publishing route which as you say is is not easy I mean selling selling an agent or a publisher on taking a chance on your book can be very difficult but it helps when you know you've got the when you've got a basic mastery of the subject matter already and you're trying to make

it understandable and useful to people. It sounds like you brought together your expertise and tried to lay it out. I did. It's really about basically the top 10 or 11 work-related challenges that a lot of my clients have been facing over the past 10 years. Yeah. And it doesn't matter whether these are people who are early career, more established. Generally speaking, they're already quite successful and capable.

I guess found the same thing has kept coming. coming up again and again and again. Yeah. And really, I thought, you know what? If these are things that successful people are dealing with with the support of a coach, I bet regular folks will appreciate this book. For sure. Honestly, I wish this book had existed 15 years ago because I would have benefited

if it had been written a bunch of years ago. Yeah. That is a fantastic motivator. I'd say that's a universal human motivator to share knowledge. He's like, I wish I knew, I wish I knew then what I know now. I mean, it's famous enough to be a line in a song, I think. And just the desire to share that and say, like, maybe I can help someone. Maybe we get a win-win out of this.

I sell a book. They get useful information. I was going to ask, not for a pick, pick your top, because this is always so arbitrary. And how do you do? But maybe one example of a common, oh, I'm sorry. Before I get to that, my second point was that there are some recurrent problems that are inherent to any topic area and inherent to the human condition, whereas you're never going to outgrow them. They are going to reoccur and you're going to have to deal with them in some way, no matter your level of business. You can be, you know, an absolute master of your craft and, as you say, working with a coach and you're still going to run into situations that have to be navigated because there's just, it's just going to happen.

So I was going to ask for an example of something, maybe whatever comes to mind or something you think might be most useful. We can talk about how you describe it in the book. Sure. So basically each chapter kind of aligns with a different issue that happens at work pretty commonly. So one of them could be being underemployed. There are a lot of people who are very capable. maybe they took a job because they were short on money or the economy wasn't great and they took something that was a little bit below their real level.

Sometimes they end up staying there and kind of getting pigeonholed. So that's a very common experience, especially for newcomers, maybe for people who are going through some kind of a transition and just feel compelled to sort of just get back into the workplace. somewhere and then kind of just go from there. There's been a lot of talk lately about toxic workplaces, so dealing with things like harassment or bullying or any of the different versions of discrimination. So these are things that, you know, they happen to people, regardless of what their background is.

Yeah. Yeah, so those are a couple of examples. Good deal. Yeah, in the, say, underemployment category, a lot of it, I think is people get comfortable. I mean, even if it isn't exactly ideal, we still settle into a routine. And then it becomes a struggle to break out of it. We would the idea of stuck in a rut.

But it's, it's more of like, what am I trying to say? I'm trying to frame it in the way that people experience it. It's like, oh, it's going to be so much work to change this bad situation. Maybe it isn't so bad. Maybe the bad is tolerable because the effort is worse. And kind of breaking people out of that mindset, go into that a bit. Well, that's it. Sometimes you start a job, and it's good when you start, but you stay too long, and you've kind of outgrown it, but the inertia to move past where you are is just too much.

For sure. Sometimes thinking about the analogy of a plane taking off into the wind. Yeah. I didn't even appreciate that planes normally go into the wind because it's counterintuitive. Yeah. But in life, sometimes there are a bunch of things. of things that are kind of pushing back against you that makes it hard to launch or to relaunch. Sometimes just a little bit of support at the right time helps people move past those points of

inertia and get reestablished. Yeah, definitely. Do you offer some guidance? I assume you do, but what am I trying to ask? Practical tips for here's how to kind of, number one. recognize you're stuck in a rut that this is a situation that fits the criteria. And here's some of the things you could do to try to change your mindset or practical steps to move you forward. That's it.

Each chapter kind of sets the scene in terms of what is the issue, some signals that you can be watching for. So that even if other people are saying, ah, nah, don't worry about it. It's not so serious. You know, you can still do your own self-evaluation to make sure that if it's something you're dealing with, then you can, you know, do that self-diagnosis and there's some ideas for how to get past it. Sorry, the cat's being annoying. I love, she wants loves right now. I sit down and that's a little distracted there. So you did, you were describing things and I was trying to keep her out of the way.

So my brain was halfway with you and it wasn't. I apologize. it's hard for me to conceptualize questions for broad stroke stuff because it's so unique and individual, I think, right? In terms of like, well, what would you tell a person in this situation? Well, what is their situation? It's kind of the use. It's almost like what's broadstrokes psychological advice.

Well, it's going to depend on the person. It's not a satisfactory answer to most people. They want hard facts. Do this always. They want like rules of thumb. They can just apply universally. And maybe there are some and maybe there aren't. See, here's the thing.

Basically, this book covers a lot of issues that people experience. They're not always the kinds of things you can just Google and find your full solution. They're also the kinds of things where when it's happening to you, may not have anyone to talk to about it. If you're at work, you may not want to talk about these things. Yeah. Or the folks who you're working with might be really motivated to kind of downplay. to sort of, you know, keep you appeased and content, or if it's more sinister, kind of gaslighting

to make you not think it's a big deal. Yeah. So issues around identity, in terms of scapegoating, imposter syndrome. I mentioned the toxic workplaces, professional boundaries, those kinds of issues. For sure. No, and actually, you just did something genius there that I wish I'd thought to ask. labels, not labels as in labeling, but, but understanding that there is a term for a concept that describes a situation and giving, arming people with understanding and the ability to label and

say, oh my God, that's what's happening to me. I'm being scapegoated in this toxic environment or, I forgot what some of the other ones were, but giving, giving people that, that ammunition, the tools for self-understanding to just see themselves and the situation for what it is accurately. I think that's very powerful. Absolutely. And that's the thing. I mean, you've got a background in psychology, so you know what boundaries are.

Can't live with them. Can't live without them. The fact is that for regular people, if you're not in mental health, you're not a teacher, not a lawyer, not a physician, you know, for the rest of us, just try to go to work and do our thing. But we don't really have any guidelines. or any guardrails in terms of what good boundaries are in the workplace. Yeah.

Things are still blurred, especially because of these years of remote work and now hybrid work. It's fraught. So, you know, I describe things that even, you know, they have names, regular people are experiencing them and not having a title for them. Yeah, definitely. Being able to really name, name the problem and fully understand. the ramifications of what it means to be in that situation. So, okay, this, I was just having a discussion.

It's fantastic. I love big, big believer in, you know, Carl Jung's collective unconscious, but also the synchronicity. There's things that just line up and, man, it feels magic. So I was actually having a discussion today about a gal who's in a family situation where, you know, no fault of her own. Her mom died. Now she's living with her older sister who expects her to be a living nanny for the kid.

And there are poor boundaries there. There are unreasonable expectations. And my advice, I don't really give advice. I try not to, I try to frame the situation so that people understand where they're coming from. And, hey, I can tell you what I would do. In that situation, I said, you know, understand, and I love this analogy, for a hero to be successful, they have to understand what story they are in. And I like, I love framing it in the Joseph Campbell style of, you know, you're going to suffer in the dark forest.

but you can either, you only have two choices at that point, you're going to give in, succumb to the dark forest and it will kill you, or you fight through to the other side and you get out and, you know, so, but just giving this person the understanding that what the pain you are experiencing is normal. This and, and what she was already, I think she was already doing about it was the right, was an effective course of action in my estimation. So, you know, just kind of normalizing that experience in terms of, yeah, you're doing literally everything you can, understand it properly. I said, you know, you're almost kind of like a POW planning a prison break. Just nod and smile and keep the guards happy until you've got your hold dug and bounce. You know, sometimes that's all you can do. And I would say that applies to the workplace, too. I might just nod and smile even if you're looking for another job. Don't make a big deal about it.

Don't cause conflict. It's not going to work in your favor. You're going to do not expect unreasonable people to treat you fairly. don't expect toxic people to be nice. If I just explain it to them, they don't care. They're not going to be good to you. If they were good to you, then you wouldn't have a problem. Go ahead.

Sorry, I rambled. I agree, and I like those two analogies. Thank you. That's what I try to do with this. I consider this, you know, edutainment. I'm like, hopefully people come away from this as they will. If they read your book, having an understanding of where they are in the situation

and what it looks like, accept it for what it is, And now you can do something about it. You got to kind of diagnose the cancer before you can cut it out, that kind of thing. I love analogies too. So it's just kind of my thing. Actually, the whole analogy thing is how I do the dream stuff. It's like you have to be able to kind of see things from a little bit of a top-down metaphysical sense of like it's not just what's happening.

It's looking at what's happening from a little bit outside the fishbowl of yourself. And sometimes you need a bit of a partner to kind of stand over your shoulder and shine a flashlight in the dark and can help you see what's happening. there. So, I know you are short on, go ahead, sorry. It's a powerful foundation,

though, because I know, you know, in terms of coincidences, I know of one person whose company name has Dreammaker in the title. I know somebody else

who's some kind of a business coach and has to do with transformational dreams or transformational dreaming. Yeah, definitely. So when I saw your podcast, I thought, huh,

This is kind of out of the box. Let me go talk to him. For sure. Yeah. And, you know, it all relates to how I conceive of a wizard. It's like, does this guy really think he's a wizard? Well, yes and no. Like, I can't hold out my hand and go behold the fire.

It's not going to happen. There's laws of physics. But laws of physics is exactly what makes it possible to be a wizard because it, you know, the classic iconic representation is old person, seen a lot, gray in the beard, etc. stooped over walking with a staff because they're, you know, literally elderly. That gives a special cause and effect insight. Let me tell you what the future is going to look like for you because I've seen it and it's consistent.

Scientists broadly are practicing wizard or even alchemy. And, you know, there's the alchemy of relationships and alchemy became chemistry, that kind of stuff. So the idea of transformation, I've talked with folks who are shamans. That's how they conceptualize. They're a transformational shaman. They're trying to help almost like a midwife give birth to new ideas. is a tuck one gal who's a dream pollinator, you know, seed your dreams with the potential to

blossom in that sense, but also, you know, pollinating your life with your dreams so that they come true so that you're putting it into practice. Great metaphysical conceptualizations of these things. I love it. And some people are just more attracted to that. Oh, wizard. You know, you can say, no offense to you, but you say, well, I'm a consultant or a coach. Technically, that's all I am. I'm just like a dream coach, which there's nothing wrong with that. It just doesn't have the same gravitas, you know. It just doesn't have the same kind of, ooh, neat appeal to it. So it's branding in some ways.

But, oh, now I got cat here in my nose. In your comments before, I just reminded me of another book that's aligned with dreams, the alchemist. I haven't heard of that. What's the nature of that one? It's a story that, depending on how you have old. you are and how you read it, it could be a children's story or it could be something much more profound.

Those are some of the best. But a young man who has a bit of a journey. And basically the key message is that when you are determined to do something and you're very motivated and you're kind of all in, universe will conspire to help make that dream come true. It kind of feels that way sometimes. It does. Yeah. And sometimes the universe will conspire to put you in an uncomfortable position.

I found that myself where it's like, I didn't really cause this. As far as I can tell, nothing I did led up to this point, but I am now in a position I find intolerable, whatever that is. And conceptually, no one changes anything until it's not working anymore. That's kind of how we get stuck in a rut. Well, this is working well enough. When it's no longer working, we start looking at, okay, what's going wrong? How can I change this? I'm not happy.

My financial needs are not being met, you know, et cetera. Excuse me. And that's, and so sometimes you get into a situation where the universe says, it literally slams a door and forgets to open a window. And you're like, all right, now I have to break a hole in a wall. I'm getting out one way or another because the option is to stay in the room trapped forever. And that's, I, well, some people do that. I can't recommend it.

I don't think it's recipe for a happy life. But yeah, I like that conceptualization, too, a video. As they say, you know, when God shuts a door, he opens a window. Like, sometimes they're both closed and you've got to make your own exit. Usually you have some kind of a tool to chisel a hole or a path, right? Definitely. Yeah, and just the knowledge of, you can consider, you know, what you do and what I do in that regard and people who get your book as like giving you the tool to chisel the hole in a way.

It's like if you or at least the knowledge to use the tools you have because if you don't know what a hammer's for. If you don't know how to work a saw, you can't accomplish what those tools are meant to do. So it's just that knowledge of what is this and how do I, how do I do what I need to do with it? Oh, we could probably talk about this stuff for another, for the whole rest of the hour. But I do I do want to get to the dream thing because I don't want, I want to cheat you of that experience. Are you, do you feel ready to jump into that? Absolutely. All right. Let me do a little timestamp here. Benjamin the dream wizard wants to help you pierce the veil of night and shine the light of

understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscapes program features real dreamers, gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New DreamScape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page at benjamin the dream wizard.com,

where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature, available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. So my normal process is, it's a very sudden transition. I'm trying to respect people's time limits. If you only have an hour to talk to me, I'll try to make it half. happen. It's okay. My basic process is going to shut up and listen. Our friend's going to tell us

the dream beginning to end, whatever you remember. As I always say, you can't do this wrong. You don't remember something. You don't remember it. No worries. And then we'll go through it again and try and try and put it together. Something that makes sense. So I'm ready when you are. All right. Well, I have two versions and they're pretty much recurring dreams on the exact same theme. And my sense is that it's it's all about this whole, well, you know what? I shouldn't get into the interpretation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't tell me.

We're going to stump the wizard here. See if I can get close to what you already understand. I'll just tell you what it was. Yeah, just one instance. Yeah, so short and sweet. I find myself on a podcast. So very similar to this. It's by Zoom.

And in one version, I'm talking to Brunet Brown. Streaming big. and we're talking about my work and we're talking about my book and of course this whole thing around career issues it does also tie into people's identities

so whether you're a member of the pride community or a racialized person or a person with disabilities or whatever I know that she's very much interested in those issues as well plus leadership and I guess you remember it feeling very surreal and very exciting, but also comfortable because she's a great interviewer.

That's one version. So that's broad strokes of kind of the similarities between them. Do you have one instance that stands out that fills in a little more details, like how, how and why, what was said, the process of it? Not really. See, the problem is that I'm, I'm. I think I'm a little sleep deprived. So when I go to sleep, I get kind of sleep,

and I don't really remember my dreams very often. Gotcha. That's not uncommon. This is one that I had a few times, but this is pretty much all that are a member. Okay. Another version, almost the exact same, but just a different person.

I'm on a podcast with Adam Grant. He's an organizational psychologist, and for a while I was listening to his podcast called Work Life. And he basically would interview people who maybe had done research on something or were experts on something that was related to work. I just found that the way he frames things is very relatable, informed usually by research. Again, I'm not sure how I got invited, but I got invited to be on his podcast. It was recorded by video. There was no travel.

and we just talked a little bit about our shared backgrounds because I'm also an organizational psychologist. I never ended up in academia, whereas he is an academic, but now also has this whole other thing that he does with the podcast and a series of books. And so again, I'm on his show and we're talking about

basically all kinds of work-related challenges that people are facing. tied again to my book. Okay. Gotcha. That's pretty much, I don't remember exact questions they asked. I think, actually,

you know what? I think both of them would have asked me, how did you write this? And why hasn't anyone else written this? Right? Given how common these problems are, well, how comes you wrote this? When they, when each of them

respectively or uniformly, asks you that question, what is their tone? How do they present it? Like amazement or, I don't know how you would describe it. Curiosity, warm curiosity and some admiration. Because both of them understand that these are issues that really get people bent out of shape. Yeah. These are things that when they're, even when they're happening at work, it's not that easy to go home and completely forget about it.

Right? If you're at the root of a scapegoating scheme, your livelihood's threatened. When you go home, you're still spinning about that. You're still processing it. Absolutely. Yeah. No, that's probably the number one reason people take home work stress is, you know, it's one thing to have a job-related problem. a problem where a situation goes wrong, you handle it poorly, and you need to address it in terms of specifically work performance.

Another thing to have relational stress with coworkers, that's a completely different thing that really does transcend into your personal life in a way that work work problems don't. Even if you go home, you're still processing how to do something better or a problem you haven't solved yet. It's a different kind of stress. It's a different kind of stress. It's challenging creativity. This one's challenging, you know, self-concept and am I the bad guy? You get, you know, the whole gaslighting side of the toxic scapegoating thing. And the fact that you're going to have to go back into a stressful environment and deal with the same people that treated you poorly last time. And every time before that, because they're not changing.

And you've got to decide how do I handle this? How do I endure it? Or how do I get out? Very much. Yeah. Relational stress is one of the key pieces of the book. You're talking about boundaries, bullying, discrimination, scapegoating, all of these things are relational. Yeah, definitely.

As I was saying about boundaries, like people, other people, can't live with them, can't live without them. There's almost a conflict by nature of our, you know, and then dealing with it well. And through proper boundaries and understanding your situation. I mean, it's kind of the human condition in a lot of ways. We can't, this will. What's that movie? There will be blood. This is a situation people are going to have to deal with to one degree or another.

Hopefully not enough that it makes you want to leave a workplace. But if it does, you got to decide, do I go? That was good for me. That's the other chapter. Did I stay or should I go? There you go. I could probably, like, along those themes, write an entire book full of, you know, with chapters, all titled after songs that really capture. It's one of the great things we love about artists is they take emotion.

and ideas and put them into a form that resonates with people. Yeah, you really feel it. You're like, that's me. That's exactly me. That's my situation. Somebody gets it. That's a very powerful catharsis there. Okay, so normally, then here's I, as I said, you cannot do this wrong.

I work with whatever people bring me. It's the best you got. That's what we do. Ideally, discrete. Images in sequence from a specific dream is best for new understanding. If it's an older dream, we get a stump the wizard kind of thing, which this is overlapping with that category a little bit, where it's like, let me see if I can get close to what you already understand based on your experience, because you know you best.

I'm not bringing anything new to the table except perspective, suggestions. None of these answers are in me. I'm not talking to spirits or God or whatever. You know, I don't have unique insight other than what if we look at it? What if we look over here? Now we're into maybe a subcategory of that, which is here's the basic theme of the dreams. I usually like to go from discrete dream to expand into themes. But you've got the themes mostly.

And you've got some specific people. But the process is the same. And I would assume this was the dream started because you finish the book and you're looking at promoting and you were either anticipating being on podcasts or were already in the process of actively being on podcasts. Now what? This was even before I even had a contract. Oh. This was during the book writing process? It was probably during that long wait between summer of 2021 and spring in 2022. Okay. Getting the time.

No, aspiring and hoping. Yeah. Well, also. Yes, in that way. So there's definitely that there's dreams that are, broadly speaking, you could say all dreams are about our hopes and fear. and that's a bit of a truism because it's what do we think about other than what might go wrong or what we hope will happen. And we try and put those together in terms of, you know, analyzing the worst case scenario to how do I deal with this or analyzing the best case scenario. How do I make that happen? So it seems like part of this was how, how, what am I trying to ask? How did you feel being the guest? What did you, it's a broad, questions. I'm trying to nail it down in terms of like, did you start feeling one way, say anxious

and trepidations and they made you comfortable or you were always confident they were going to like you and it was going to be a good experience? What was your emotional evolution over the dream? I don't think I had a full evolution or at least I can't remember it right now. Sure. But I remember what I remember of both versions is that there were warm experiences. Gotcha. I don't know if they started that way, but the parts that I remember was that they were, they were good interviews. They were relatable. We were laughing. Yeah. It was good. Yeah. And I think that's a very powerful iconography, so to speak, that what you got from them was warm curiosity and that it was, they showed interest, but that it was, validating of your value, your worth, that they recognize the kindred spirit of, of, you know, worthy of respect in that way. It's, how do we tease out whether this is purely wishful thinking or,

what am I trying to say, or a realistic appraisal in a sense? That can be a tough question. That's where the nature of the dream details sometimes give us context. I would lean towards, and you tell me how this feels like I said, with music and songs. I would say because of the context, this does speak more towards a self-confidence in terms of,

I genuinely believe what I have to share is of value, such that people I respect for their opinion and their ability would look at me and go, I am a kindred spirit. I am someone who's offering something of equal value, but in the same value category. How do you feel about that? I think that's accurate. See, for 10 years in my own business, I'm often doing things in the background.

It's supporting individuals who are trying to get ahead or solve problems. And on the HR side, again, typically kind of in the background. helping to solve HR related issues or maybe doing some recruitment for an organization. So not always front and center. And

going back to even my early experiences as a kid, I've always been kind of underestimated. That's okay because it allows you to move very quickly. That's true. There's one. One, there's a statement I heard, oh, years and years and years ago, and it always struck me, you know, under promise over deliver.

Set that expectation right. I love, I love that idea. I mean, yeah, you don't want to claim, I'm the biggest, on the greatest, on the best, because then people go, well, you're pretty good. But come on. And also, you don't want to say, I'm not very good because that's, you got to, you know, because then someone's going to go, well, then why would I hire you? No offense. You admit yourself that you're not. So you've got these kind of icons of people you would consider peers in the, in the, you know,

in the broader sphere, people who do good work that you respect and that they're acknowledging your worth in a way that is welcoming and they're genuinely curious. I think that's a key component too. It's like you're conceiving your work as contributing something new in a sense, even if it's as old as Aesop's fables, the current discussion, I would say, may be lacking certain elements that you think are vital to the broader conversation and that if These things are added. And that's why you've got, I would say, they're genuine warm curiosity, warm because they like you and they consider you, you know, validating you.

But also curiosity because they wouldn't be curious if they were bored, if they already knew all these things. If you weren't adding something valuable that was new or changing the conversation in some way. I don't know how that strikes you. That's probably accurate. And one thing that I have going for me that many people don't, that I work on two. sides. I work with individuals doing executive coaching or career coaching. I also work with organizations helping to figure out, you know, various interventions to solve problems. So I hear things from two very different perspectives that don't usually belong in the same person. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

And there's, I would say you have to work on both sides of the problem because they one can't really work without the other. If you don't have interpersonal relationships that are functional and you don't have business processes that are functional, you get both of those dysfunctional and the whole thing falls apart. That business is not going to be around for very long. One or the other being a problem and that impairs its opposite or part partner. You get both working the best they possibly can. It's hard not to succeed in that sense. We can't have a Johari window out of that. In that corner is like this is this is where success is even possible.

Looking at the details here. So you definitely have, you've got practical elements in terms of, in our brain often does this. Well, what's the scenario? Well, this is entirely realistic podcast by Zoom. You're a guest. A little bit of the fantasy element of I'm maybe not, I'm not big enough to get invited on large podcasters platform. So that would be the. hopeful aspirational side of, oh, I wish, I wish this would happen. But then you also have

the, I would say more backing into a more realistic appraisal of my book has been published. I think this will happen. I think it will happen and it will be successful to the degree that these folks who do have larger platforms and who I do respect, established professionals, would want to have me on and have a discussion about this material. I think is when I when I when I got the the contract from Rutledge was actually absolutely floored because I had heard of them I had used some of their books over the years right it's not it's not an unknown yeah it's always nice to have that validation too of like you know it's going to work but you don't even if you believe it there's something magical about okay now it's real it's actually happening that no matter how much you believe it, just that confirmation, that proof that you were right and that it is what you thought it was is, that's a moment that, you know, just enjoy it for first and foremost. That's it. It made me feel like I'd already won before I even sold the book.

Yeah, definitely. That's, oh, that's exactly the way. So it is, it is literally a victory and it is something that should be celebrated. And it's a sign of things moving in the right direction versus just no movement at all. Yeah. You, you did say there was a bit of a, um, oh my God, you're killing me, Smalls. You got to go. Compressed air, my friends, if you have a cat that won't leave you alone or get off your keyboard, just, just a little spray, doesn't hurt them. They don't like it. They don't like getting blown in their face. You, you describe some emotional content to it, the, a surreal nature, but an excitement. And, um, um, A comfort level.

You felt comfortable. I can't read my own handwriting here. Those are, I would say, key elements too in terms of it's a bit surreal. Like, it's hard. What is surreal? Surreal is when it appears disconnected from reality. It's when it too good to be true in a way. Like, it's hard to accept.

Is this really happening? That's kind of the nature of that surreal feeling. If you agree. Yeah, especially because it's on Zoom, right? You're not even, there's no buildup because you're not traveling somewhere. It's true. There's no green. Well, I guess there can be a digital green room.

Like we're in right now. Yeah. That's why I called it that. I actually have a second channel that's called the comfy chair. But for some reason, every time I try and drag people in there to make it a locked conversation, it won't work. It's a technical problem. So we're supposed to meet in the green room when we go to the comfy chair. But that's it just doesn't happen.

That's my fault on the being a little bit technologically disabled side of things. But you also had an excitement, too. Like, I think these are, again, another realistic self-appraisal in terms of how would I feel if I was in this situation? What would this genuinely feel like to me in reality, not just an imagination. What our imagination does, honestly, is try and predict the future as much as possible. And to be honest with ourselves in a way that is more difficult when we're conscious, when we can reflect on our thoughts actively. That's where you get the hidden revelations that Freud said was entirely composed dreams.

I don't think that's the case, but we've come a long way since then. But I think this is, again, another realistic appraisal of that would be very exciting. I would just be genuinely excited to have some, you know, a large platform to get my message out there. And speaking with the person I respect, it's just the opportunity of it all and talking about these concepts that I am. expressing in my own unique way that are of interest to me and of interest to the person I'm talking to. That's, you know, I'd like to get the point someday where people are excited to talk to me. It's like, oh, I've listened to you for years. I finally got on. Well, not only that, but let's face it, sometimes in dreams, you're kind of free to express certain things.

Because let's face it. I have one book, a fairly small social media following. So most people are just going to laugh if they say, oh, yeah, well, just you watch. Maybe I'm going to be on the Brené Brown podcast for Adam Grant's podcast. You'd be like, yeah, come on. It's never going to happen. That would be a wonderful piece of synchronicity if you were able to get this podcast to them and say, look, I talked about you. I was, you can make this a prophetic dream. All you got to do is invite me.

And the funny thing is that just last month I was invited to be part of a documentary. There's a filmmaker who is associated with a law school. And he's creating some course content and documentaries for this law school. He heard about my book on LinkedIn. We weren't even connected, but somehow somebody were connected to you. He saw it in that feed. invited me to do a one-hour interview that he'll edit and include in this series. When we wrapped up, he told me that part of what he liked about my approach was that I have a background in organizational psychology.

He studied at the Wharton Business School. One of his professors is Adam Grant. Oh. So I'm not saying it's going to happen, but there's a chance that. It really is. You know what? You know what? Speak really practically.

Like honestly, I would send that guy a copy of this podcast where we're talking about this dream and how you were in there and our understanding of it. He might send it to the professor. That might get his attention more than you sending it to Adam Grant. And that guy, he might say, hey, she's in my documentary and she had a dream about talking to you on the podcast. What if you talk to her? That might actually happen. That's, uh, that's. And then I couldn't say.

So I draw the line very, very much between the spooky woo. I say that would love spooky woo side of dreams, which who knows? I don't know. So I'm not going to comment on that. I set it aside, the supernatural stuff. I don't know what to do with. I can only do the psychological side of things. But that doesn't mean it is impossible.

It doesn't mean this is not literally a prophetic dream. I can't tell the difference. So I don't give any comment on it. But if it comes, I want to know if it comes true. I want to know if you're in a conversation with Adam Grant by Zoom and you have a moment of, oh my God, this is my dream. I want to hear about that. That's, I'm still collecting that evidence. I have to pinch myself or blow some compressed air on myself. That would certainly feel surreal. It certainly would. You're like, oh, my God. This is bizarre. I don't know. That's, that's why I don't.

I really, you know, one of the things that makes someone a wizard is knowing what you don't know. You don't just pull stupid things out of your butt and say, well, I think this and this is going to happen. Because then everyone goes, well, he's just an idiot. You know, knowing what? what you don't know. Don't predict beyond your ability to actually say with any degree of certainty. So that's why I say, I don't know, but I wouldn't fascinated by it. I do want to know. Sometimes we have, you know, I always find it fascinating when we realize we have one degree of separation. Yeah. I remember probably three or four years ago, I was invited on a podcast. It was for Startup Canada. And the host interviewed me.

and then a few months later, she was interviewing Michelle Obama on stage. I thought, huh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's great audience exposure, too. You got someone who's a big name interviewing a bigger name, and then you were also on their show. That's how I've come across a lot of people, where I just watch someone because I like their interview style, like their analysis and commentary,

and all of a sudden they have someone on I've never heard of. And I'm like, hey, this guy's kind of interesting. Why don't I check out what he's done? Then I find out he's connected to other. people have already been watching as well. I'm like, how did I never hear about this person before? And suddenly things just kind of fall into place. I love that too. That kind of synchronicity as well, especially that yeah, that one degree of separation. I knew the guy that knows the guy. Whoa. That could have also spurred the dream in a sense of this is actually possible.

Sometimes we're looking at, well, what if something that is technically possible did actually happen? We can't say for sure it will, but that that would be more on the wish fulfillment side. a lot of times we put ourselves in these situations where it's like what if the best possible outcome happened how would that play out realistically and then we get a fantasy of it and that's kind of what we do when we daydream too daydreaming is there's a book i'm going to be working on pretty soon which is the you know the psychology of daydreams and it's related to sleep dreams because it's that abstracted and by by abstract i don't just mean conceptual but the the old timey word was abstract we would say distractor we would say distractive

or lack of focused attention, distraction, type of abstracted thinking. We let our minds wander and thoughts just come on their own. And sometimes you can get into a trance-like or meditative state where you're watching yourself think and not really controlling it, not trying to influence it or nudge it, just seeing what flows naturally from it. And I don't know how to get people into that state. I'm not a hypnotist. But I've experienced it myself too.

And it's when you're driving down, the road and you cannot remember the last mile of freeway. You know you didn't hit me, buddy, because you're still driving, but you couldn't say what you passed or, you know, you're, and that happens to be too listening to the radio or a podcast while I'm driving. It's like, I started thinking about the concepts and or just listening to a podcast at all. I start thinking about the concepts. And five minutes of conversation goes by. I have no idea what they said. I have to rewind it. I get completely lost in my own thoughts. And I'm sure there's a link between the daydreams.

and the manifesting. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I think we need license to daydream. Sometimes, too, like some people go, you know, get your head out of the clouds or quit wool gathering. Now, that can be good advice if you're not paying attention to a present, important concern. Sure. Get your head in the game.

Yeah. But sometimes you're not in the game. And now it's time to let your mind wander, let your fantasies go. What would this look like? I'd say the most common thing is probably what, what they call stair thoughts. Thoughts you have after a conversation when you're climbing up the stairs, especially after, say, an argument with someone when you're like,

I'm trying to present a point of view. I'm not getting my point across. The conversation ends 10, 20 minutes, an hour later. I should have said, X, Y, Z. I should have done this in that situation. Because especially the more impactful these things are, the more we persevered on them. And that's also, you know, perseveration is too far. but rumination somewhere between ignoring it,

thinking about it and ruminating on it. It's because there's something we need to understand, something we feel we failed to accomplish. And, you know, that's why I tell people to literally sleep on it. Sometimes you wake up in the morning, you won't remember a single dream, but an answer will come to you

because your brain had time to process it free from external input, conscious attention. And you were mentioning that too in terms of your kind of sleep, disruption lately. I also don't remember most of my dreams. I believe my conceptualizations I sleep too deeply. My consciousness is too far away from the subconscious dream experience. I'm just not paying attention to it. I just don't see it. So I get nothing out of it. But you feel this may for you be related to disrupted sleep, insufficient length of sleep. How would you characterize

it? I think this past couple of months, I've just had so many things happening. I've been a bit over-stimulated and just not slept enough. I'll wake up. It's mostly good things, right? A lot of excitement around things of my son's doing, a lot of excitement around my book launch, really nice successes for some of my clients. But my clients, you know, I'm very discreet, so I don't talk about what they're doing. Some of them have hit some amazing milestones and it's just been absolutely glorious to watch it. Yeah. So just probably a lot of overstimulation, but I can't complain because these are just great things. Yeah. There is good stress. I mean, but it's important, I would say, for people to realize that even positive

accomplishments will also involve stress. You know, bad things are stressful, good things are stressful. Good stress is kind of a different kind. I think biologic, biochemically, we experience it differently, but definitely psychologically we process it differently. But that doesn't mean it isn't stress. Doesn't mean you won't be stressed, that it won't involve effort, you know. I wonder, just the intuition came to me as like maybe you don't have as many outlets for talking about these things, especially the private stuff. Like you have to keep it to yourself more than more often than not. Yeah, absolutely. I am very discreet. So, what's what stays with one client or starts with one client just kind of ends with that client

gotcha i sometimes joke around with friends who i have who are lawyers i'm not sure who has more secrets them right that's a toss-up too yeah the who's who's got more um secrets here your psychologist or your lawyer that's a good one that's it's probably joke in there um okay a psychologist a lawyer and a priest walk into a bar, right? Okay, so actually there is a form of solution. I won't say it is the solution, but this is a known problem, say, in psychology itself, a lot of therapists especially say the Freudian analysts have an analyst. They have their own.

So there's a certain stress to the job. It's good stress. You're helping people solve problems. You're putting your mind to work creatively. People are coming out of working with you more. more healthy than they went in. And you are sponging, sponge like absorbing a lot of their stress and trauma and different things because you have to care enough to put your mind to work to solve the problem creatively. And that level of caring is taking on some measure of their stress.

And that's the boundary things. It's almost like you can't do the job without suffering that ill effect. So the solution that they've come up with is, you know, if you're a psychologist managing a bunch clients, you want to have someone you can talk to that is also going to keep things confidential. And then there's actual processes and boundaries for that in terms of you can talk about the stuff with me, but we're going to keep it vague. This is client A under situation Z and we're not going to name names or get too specific. But you can at least talk through it. That would probably be my advice if I were to quote unquote advice is to say maybe get someone you can talk to that understands how to do that properly. Get some of the stuff off your mind.

process it verbally and that hopefully would improve your ability to manage the good stress without being overwhelmed, disrupting sleep cycles because you need your, you know, the Princess Bride, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. Well, thank goodness. I do have that in place, but sometimes when the volume of things is a lot and it's happening in a short time period, things kind of get out of whack. Yeah, and it is no panacea. Sometimes you're just going to experience more stress and you're going to have some life effects and you get through it, you know.

And sometimes there's nothing you can do. Yeah. I rambled a lot for a situation. A concept you already understood in a situation you already had under control. But I was doing it mostly for the benefit of the audience. Like here's here's the way it is. Absolutely. And it's not all work.

Like I mentioned, I have a son who he applied to medical school very early. and was thrilled to get interviews at four universities, which almost never happens when you apply after second year. So just, you know, being present with him and helping him with some of that prep, even some of the fun stuff, like going shopping for his suit and tie and shoes and all of that. Oh, yeah. You know, it's just exciting. It is, yeah, exciting and exhausting and good stress in that way.

So yeah, there's certain things like moving. You move to a new house. You got to pack. You got to schlep boxes into a truck. You got to unload the truck. You got to set up your new house. All tremendously. Like the top of the list of stressors along with getting married, birth, births, deaths, and funerals, that kind of thing.

Or what is it? Births, funerals, and moving. And marriage and, long story short. Sometimes you just got to accept this is going to suck for a minute. This is going to be stressful. I'm going to have some. The problem would be then if it doesn't resolve when the stressor goes away. If you stay stressed long after the thing is happening, then there's a problem.

But otherwise, this is kind of, yeah, that's life, right? I mean, you know, sometimes just reframing it. It's just exciting. Yeah. It's just fun and exciting sometimes. And it's okay. And we forget. Every day is in Christmas, right?

That's true. And we forget what that's like as a kid sometimes to say, well, I'm going to go short on because I'm having too much fun at this party. We used to do that for fun. And now we value our nap time a little more because we get older, huh? For sure. Well, I'm going to guess the recurring dreams stopped on their own. It's been a while since you had one?

It's been a while since I had one. I'm not sure if I've had one since my book got published or even since I got the contract. I can remember. That is, I like making these predictive guests and say, what, what do you think here? Because it seemed very much seemed related to this specific time and trying to wrap your head around the experience itself. Like, what am I experiencing? How do I understand? How do I, you know, label it like this is, this is exciting versus this is unpleasant or stressful.

So if I'm, if my theories hold, then I should be able to make those predictive judgments. that the usefulness of it expired. You didn't need to perseverate on it anymore. You didn't need to run through the scenarios in your mind because now things were actually starting to happen. Now you had real results to look at and say, well, I can worry about that instead, or I can set these other what-if concerns to rest.

And that's just basically my broad strokes theory of why we have recurring dreams, until we understand what we need to understand or until the situation itself resolves by some definite physical real world happening, then we tend to run these things through our mind over and over again. Probably a very good analysis because I had all those months in limbo. Yeah.

That's a big deal as limbo. That idea of uncertainty. Anything could happen. Nothing could happen. How long do I wait while nothing is happening? Is that normal? Is this too long? All these unresolved questions.

As soon as they become resolved, it's like, oh, I can let them go. I have to worry about that anymore. She's thank God. Well, did you have any other, say, specific questions about the dream experience? Any element of it that you're like, I don't understand why that happened. And we can talk about it. But you do or you don't either way. Can't think of anything else.

I'm still glad I came to talk to you because this was different. It was just fun and interesting, huh? Yeah. Because nobody asked me about my dreams. Right. There's actually an old saying. You know, don't burden your friends by talking about your dreams. This goes way back to like biblical times in terms of advice.

We have Greek and Roman era of like everyone's dreams are fascinating to them, but rarely fascinating to other people. I don't think that's the case if we can draw something useful from it. If we can take it and if we can consider it a mystery to be solved and show how it's relevant to that person's life, then other people can kind of enjoy that process. And what I hope is you watch enough of these videos. You can do this for yourself. You don't need me. You can kind of see what I do and get it and then do it on paper with a friend.

All you need is sometimes, you know, for a friend or family to talk to who is willing to listen and who finds the process interesting enough in terms of mystery solving. And you could probably do what I can do. I don't think I'm, I mean, I think I'm special, but not that unique. You know, I think anyone can do this if they kind of develop some of the talents that I have. And it's not impossible, you know. You too can become a wizard of dreams. He's got to practice at it.

Interesting process, interesting podcast. I'm looking forward to flipping through some of your catalog to watch a few more episodes. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Well, I know we're probably coming up on your time limit here and I'll try and get you out the door. I think we've gone as far as we can in terms of kind of conceptualizing this. The reason it happened and what you were thinking about that made that particular imagery relevant to your life. That's always what I'm aiming for. So that's it. Shorter episode today. I'll just say,

once again, thank you to our friend, Dr. Helen Ophosu out of Anawa, Canada, author, executive coach, HR consultant, and YouTuber with a brand new book. What was the title of the book? I forgot to ask you about that. Yeah, it's called How to Be Resilience in Your Career, Facing Up to Barriers at Work. Nice. And I'm writing that down. Should have done that. I can't believe I forgot to ask that. I'm not an interviewer. I'm a dream wizard. It's completely different. You can find Dr. Rofosu at The Resilientcareer.com.

Of course, link in the description below. And for my part, I will say, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, all we need more volunteer dreamers. 16 works of historical dream literature, the most recent dreams in their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson. I forget the title and author of this book I edited. all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com

Encyclopedia, all 16 works of historical dream literature. And just once again, Helen, thank you for being here. I've enjoyed talking to you. Me as well. I've enjoyed our conversation. Thank you and wishing you continued success.

Thank you very much. And everybody out there, thanks for listening.