Conscious Choice: Settling for More

June 2004 | Body & Mind Health

Settling for More

by Julia Mossbridge

This summer, our family will be moving into what is, quite literally, our dream home. But our dream would never have been fulfilled if we had gotten what I had originally intended. What happened is that I had to learn to “settle for more.”

“Settle for more” has a curious feel to it. “Settle,” suggests closing off possibilities. How can one settle for more? It seems paradoxical. Diane Scholten, Chicago-area author of Be Your Own Life Coach (www.scholtenassociates.com) decodes the seeming paradox of “settling for more.” At a recent workshop, she emphasized that in order to reach a goal, we must be willing to turn perceived setbacks into bridges that can help us realize our dreams.

As an example, Diane told a story about Carol, who dreamed of moving to Paris. Carol became disappointed when she realized that the best way to get a job in Paris was to teach English, not to work in the textile industry as she had fantasized. Instead of letting Carol abandon her dream, Diane coached her to take the step that would most easily get her to Paris. Carol did, teaching English for a while until serendipity and perseverance landed her in textiles.

In this context, “settling for more” means erasing the possibility of getting less. If you decide to give up your dream after one failure, you are settling for less and you have closed off the possibility of fulfillment. But if you don’t want to abandon your dream, you must use all your effort to settle only for success. In doing this, failures become road signs, letting you know which roads do not lead to your dream.

Here’s how “settling for more” worked for me.

I grew up on an old farm in Libertyville, Ill., my father’s childhood home. By the time I came along, the land was no longer used for growing crops; instead, it was left to grow wild. And on those few acres my sister and I learned how to play “fox and goose” (run quickly), how to drive the tractor (on our father’s lap), how not to climb a silo (barefoot) and how to embrace the land.

As an adult living in an urban setting, I have been itching to return to open land. I have had nightmares in which I can’t find a field, no matter where I look. It’s like part of my body has been missing and I must find and reclaim it.

Last year I thought I had my chance — the farmhouse my grandfather built was for sale, and my husband and I made an offer on it. After much hand wringing and tears (not to mention visualization, intention setting and dreaming) our best offer got outbid. We lost that house...and with it I thought I had lost my chance to reclaim my “land-body.” I was pissed at God. I thought, “I tried to follow my dream, and this is where it got me?”

Later that year, I had the chance to visit the farmhouse. Angry and disillusioned, I wasn’t sure whether I should go, but I did. When I saw the house again, I realized that I had been looking at it through the eyes of the past, and now I saw the real picture. The house was the same — but the land was not; it had been chopped into small parcels. I could not look out and see fields from the kitchen window. There were no long views of the prairie clouds on which to rest my eyes. I could see that if my dream of returning to this farmhouse had been fulfilled, it would have resulted in huge disappointment.

Here’s the settle-for-more part. Instead of abandoning my desire to live in open space, I let my desire to reclaim the land grow stronger, keeping the door open for a return to a more rural life. My crucial insight was that I wanted my dream fulfilled, but my ideas about how it would happen were just that — ideas. Settling for more meant letting my ideas go.

One night, I found myself dreaming about a red farmhouse with a bike path nearby. Instead of banishing the dream (my instinctive response because of my recent disappointment), I continued to pursue it. By spring this year, my daydreams were bigger and seemingly more unrealistic than ever. Even so, I let myself have them.

About the time I thought I was going to pop out of my shell if we didn’t move, we got a phone call from a family who lived in a new rural community called Prairie Crossing (www.prairiecrossing.com) — an ecologically oriented, open-space community about five minutes from my childhood home. This family wanted to sell their house and invited us to see it. It was a big red farmhouse, overlooking pastures with views of wetlands, old-growth trees, a barn and silo. One of the community bike trails runs right by the house, into a nature preserve.

So that’s where you’ll find us this summer, and many summers to come: playing fox and goose, riding tractors, and climbing the silo (shoes on). Here’s to dreams coming true as we continue to let our failures bring us closer to success.

Julia Mossbridge is a Chicago-based cognitive neuroscientist and author of Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul’s Work (www.unfolding.org).

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