For more than twenty years, Carl Lindeborg has worked with people and organisations as an advisor, consultant and teacher. He regularly leads development programs at Lindeborg’s Eco Retreat, and has extensive experience as a program leader at SSE Executive Education, Oxford Leadership and Companions for Leadership. In his new book, The Authentic Shift, he writes both philosophically and practically about personal development, leadership – and how we can relate well to an increasingly complex and changing world.

Dreams and visions change the world. Courageous dreams and visions build bridges between the impossible and the possible. They can also alter our habitual direction and steer us onto a higher, narrower path that few feet have trodden before. Dreams inspire and activate. They make people come alive and embark on journeys of discovery towards the difficult and the meaningful. This is leadership: taking risks for something worth risking and inspiring others through your own being and endeavour.

However, not all dreams do the full job. Many dreams promise something they can never deliver, not because they are not achieved but precisely because they are achieved without satisfying the more profound longing. Dreams that deliver on all levels emerge as a natural extension of the authentic self’s expanding identity, core values and deeper sources of meaningfulness. These dreams carry energy that rewards us from the inside while we strive on the outside. These dreams inspire others to take steps towards the important and sometimes difficult. And these dreams, combined with decisive action, make truly valuable impacts in the bigger picture.

Our world needs new dreams. Many of the old ones are too simplistic and promise something they can never deliver. We need more extraordinary visions that can help us channel almost infinite human potential in a sustainable and meaningful direction. That is why many communities, organisations, and individuals are now actively searching for the next dream, the next vision, and the next image of what is possible.  Without these transformative dreams, we are in a trap of repetition and reactivity and continue operating in a paradigm of consciousness that can no longer take us where we need to go. 

“Dreams make people come alive and embark on journeys of discovery towards the difficult and the meaningful.”

In the absence of sufficiently large and innovative visions in our broad societal culture and media, and among many politicians and global institutions, bold dreaming is becoming a grassroots movement in which every one of us counts. As more of us explore the inner world deeper and translate new insights into vision and action, more enabling changes are taking place. Right now, innovative people, teams and organisations are building an unstoppable transformative momentum. This movement of authentic visioning and realisation works much like a slingshot. The more deeply rooted our dream is in our inner world, the more power it has in the outer world.  

A visionary imagining of the future does not happen by itself, though. As we know, our  Stone Age brain loves predictability, and it is easy for the brain’s image of the future to become an unquestioned extrapolation of history. Sometimes, when we are on a development curve with more to give, this can be the right conclusion, but when we are about to shift something, this becomes a limitation to our growth.