Are You Ready to Resuscitate Your American Dream?

Is it even possible to resuscitate the American dream? Are dreams applicable anymore in this deeply politically, socioeconomically divided American and global environment of anger, frustration and negativity?
I’ll admit that I try to avoid the “news” these days. Consuming it feels much like enduring a bad Reality TV series or a Jerry Springer episode with bad language, bad behavior and a lot of justifying, explaining and defending vs. taking responsibility for solving.
I’m tired of wallowing in all the crap it feels like I can’t control anyway. I’m sick of feeling like a rubbernecker gawking at the car crash on the other side of the barrier. The more focus we collectively give to the bashing and carnage, the more intensely it escalates the fight.
This is the Law of Attraction in action. Like gravity, it’s a natural law that simply exists — there’s no denying it. We must operate within its rules. With Earth’s gravity, we know that what goes up must come down. Similarly, with the Law of Attraction, we know that where our focus goes, energy flows.

HOW LAW OF ATTRACTION CAN REVIVE YOUR AMERICAN DREAM
The Law of Attraction is entirely inclusive, so you can’t say:
I don’t want to work 60-hour weeks with 2-hour commutes.
I want to stop buying Amazon stuff I don’t need and accumulating more debt.
I want to stop binge eating bad food and watching too much TV.
You have to focus in terms of the positive, the affirmative. In other words:
I want peace and prosperity for myself and all other beings the world over.
I want harmony and happiness between all peoples.
I want safety and security.
Do you see how that works? It’s simply a habit we need to first become aware of, and then choose to shift our thinking and our words, which drives us to behave differently.
It’s interesting to notice how much we habitually think in the negative vs. the affirmative. And we really don’t understand the magnitude of how this sort of thinking keeps us stuck in life…in a rut of feeling constant low-grade (or maybe even intense) discontent…and this only serves to draw more of the same to us. We fail to recognize the power of our own thoughts.
EMBRACE YOUR POWER FOR CREATING WITH CLEAR INTENTION
Our thoughts drive our actions, dictate our feelings, and determine the quality of our lives. Hence, we should be less careless and more intentional with our thoughts. But no one teaches this in Western society because we’re so focused on doing and productivity vs. being and noticing.
I’m so appreciative of Wendy, my fabulous Power Yoga teacher from Red Dragon Yoga in San Rafael, CA who shared these words with us at the close of every class:
Our thoughts become words
Our words become actions
Our actions become habits
Our habits become character
Our character determines our destiny.
It was a beautiful reminder of our own power to direct the trajectory of our lives simply by how we choose to think about them. So you’ve really got to own responsibility for that power because it can lead you down good roads or bad.
I spent a decade of my life there in Marin County, north of the Golden Gate Bridge surrounded by all of the beauty of the San Francisco Bay Area’s stunning landscapes. Yet even surrounded by all that soothing, calming nature, it was a struggle striving to be still and listen to myself. Amidst all that natural beauty, there was…and still is… a whole lot of modern societal noise and unrest.
IS THE AMERICAN DREAM ONLY POSSIBLE IN MID-WEST CITIES?
Maybe you can live your American dream in Oklahoma City or Dallas? But the American dream feels nearly dead in San Francisco for the average person. This pessimism is understandable when a June 2018 report from Department of Housing and Urban Development said that a San Francisco metro area family of four bringing in $117,400 a year qualifies as “low income.”
Yea, I know, right?! Go ahead, you can pick your jaw up off the floor now. It’s absurd! But it seems to me people stay for two primary reasons:
- Millennials and Gen X’ers that have the degrees and skills required for the plethora of tech, finance, and real estate development jobs, stay for the rapid upward career trajectory and lucrative compensation (at least for a single person, although till you pay your living costs, most aren’t able to save much if at all), and

- Millennials and Gen X’ers that don’t possess what it takes to snag those lucrative jobs are often struggling so desperately they can’t even scrape together the funds to move… they end up moving back in with their parents so they can at least pay their college loans; immigrant families lives 2–3 families per apartment; and a continually growing number of people end up homeless on the streets.
These are the trends I watched escalate during my second decade living in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s why I made the hard choice to leave 20 years of friendships, and especially to leave my sons who I’d raised mostly on my own. Thankfully, my boys were all but raised and heading off to pursue their post-high school studies. That enabled me to be more agile in how I chose to resuscitate my own American dream [more on that in another blog post].
WHAT WAS THE AMERICAN DREAM WHEN PEOPLE BELIEVED?
Let’s recall what the American dream was at one time, not so long ago, when it was believed. The innovators, immigrants, entrepreneurs, homesteaders and war veterans of the Silent Generation (born early 1920’s to early 1940’s) were the creators of the American dream concept.
The American dream meant a relatively comfortable life for nearly all, with:
★ a house and a white picket fence
★ mostly free higher education for their kids
★ a steady job and income
★ time for family, friends and vacation
★ a guaranteed retirement income to sustain them in old age
The post-WWII period of expanded American business and prosperity, growing societal, political and economic freedoms afforded this American dream. The generation that grew up benefiting from this era was the Baby Boomer Generation — my parents.
When we Generation X babies hit the stage (early-mid 1960’s to early 80’s), it was all peace, love and happiness at first. Our Baby Boomer parents were enjoying the freedoms and free love of the 60’s. But by the end of the 1970’s not everyone was thinking Bob Dylan vibes of unity and love, dancing with flowers in their hair, and smoking the Ganga.
The titans of industry that got a big taste of free market enterprise riches started to grow some seeds of deep greed. These seeds would fuel us well into the 1980’s-90’s and, frankly, to this day. The decade of the 1970’s, between Woodstock and the Reagan years, historian author Bruce Schulman calls the “great shift” in American culture, society and politics.

CAN THE “GREAT DIVIDE” BE BRIDGED?
As a nation, we shifted away from the public-spirited universalism that gave America the New Deal and the civil rights movement. Our society shifted toward the sovereignty of the free market and private life. Further, with Nixon’s removal of the gold-backed currency standard in 1972, we started our scary trend toward easy money. By the 1980’s, American society began to truly believe the words of Gordon Gecko in the movie, Wall Street, “Greed is good!”
This was when the tide turned, and the trends dipped south. The American dream established just one generation before had already begun to die. Forty years later… it definitely appears to be on life support, in many of the most populous U.S. metros.
And just like that, the country’s mood shifted from brotherhood to complete individualism. We started building bigger fences to keep each other out. This further isolated us from knowing and understanding each other. But we just bought more things to self-soothe our loneliness. This “great divide” has steadily grown for decades. It’s now a chasm as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon and is geographic, social, economic and political in nature.
Has the once admired American democracy, land of endless opportunity been reduced to a bitter satire? It feels discouraging to sense all the anger in the air! In the U.S. with the current mockery of the office of our Presidency, the country has clearly become angrier and more divided than ever.
But the rising tide of anger, frustration, and citizens’ rights violations are a global problem. You can see it in the totalitarian leanings of newly elected regimes in Turkey, Hungary and Italy. They aren’t the only countries whose political pendulum is swinging far right. But it does feel alarming to realize the U.S. is on a similar course.
HOW WILL YOU RESHAPE YOUR AMERICAN DREAM?
Are you ready to focus your energy on solutions instead of the problems that only serve to keep us all stuck? Then stop watching the news and reading the inflammatory headlines that are simply a distraction from building your dream.
Instead, envision your version of the American dream. The only actions you can control are yours, so start there. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Imagine what your solution feels like — what emotions it conjures up in you to feel:
- Financially stable and able to afford a lifestyle you desire
- Confident in the multiple, independent income streams you enjoy creating
- Certain about the strength and magnitude of your retirement nest egg
- Balanced and healthy because you have time for relationships and self-care
Law of Attraction is real so stop thinking about the depressing state of “what is” and focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want.
… And if you want to get connected to a like-minded group of people all inspired to intentionally reshape their dreams of freedom and prosperity too…so they can live life on their own terms.
CLICK HERE to join the Wait List for our Mentorship Program opening again soon.
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