The Life We Dream Of

Why the fantasies of childhood are rarely random

Early fantasies are rarely about places. They are about unmet needs. What we imagine as children often becomes the blueprint for the life we create, or the shame we carry. This is a story about authorship, rehearsal, and rewriting the script.

My cousin and I used to dress up in her mom’s clothes. She’s two years older than I am, and we were a tight pack. We would carry purses and walk around the neighborhood speaking complete gibberish, pretending we were from another country.

That’s the thing about childhood imagination, it’s pure, and there’s so much certainty around it.

Bringing that certainty into adulthood takes more effort, but it’s possible. When we have certainty beyond logic, beyond knowing, beyond guessing, things do turn out.

When I was six or seven, I decided I was going to live in America. I don’t remember making an announcement. There was no dramatic moment. It was an inner state of mind that quietly took real estate in my heart. I had certainty around it, as if I thought, “When I’m done being a kid, I’ll become a grown-up and design my own life.”

Somewhere between my mother’s magazine pages, I learned about home décor and fashion designers. Those magazines were Scandinavian, so not fully what I was looking for then, but it was enough. It allowed my grown-up life to begin taking shape in my mind. Everything felt possible.

From Reykjavík, my perfect inner world felt impossibly far away and strangely close at the same time. It wasn’t really about geography. It was about choices. It was about designing a life instead of inheriting one.

I learned later that our brains begin sketching our future long before we know it. Even as children, we are quietly predicting the lives we hope to live. Long before we have language for ambition or purpose, we are already rehearsing our becoming. My imagination was building a bridge between who I was allowed to be and who I wanted to become.

Today’s studies show that when we imagine something that excites us, our brains release the same chemicals as when we actually experience it. Dreaming becomes our fuel.

Early fantasies are rarely about places.

Through childhood and the years of becoming, my dream followed me quietly into adulthood, into my love of making a home, into my sensitivity to space. Into my going to an American University, studying theatre, and then later my work with branding and storytelling, which eventually led into designing EVOKE Your Story™.

I wasn’t chasing “America.” I was chasing authorship that I believed was allowed there, the freedom to make different choices than everyone around me in Iceland. They all wore the same clothes and used the same expressions. I wanted to choose my environment and curate my life. Mostly I wanted to create coherence between who I was inside and how I lived outside.

I remember seeing a James Bond film in my childhood. We weren’t allowed to, but somehow we sat behind the sofa at my aunt’s house and watched it. That’s my memory, and I’m sticking to it.

There was something about the music and the slickness of James Bond. I was mesmerized. I wanted to become James Bond. So I rehearsed.

My cousin and I once followed an old lady into a building and into the elevator. I was the smallest of the group and ready for some of the scrappy work. I followed the lady into her apartment and I went into her closet and got stuck there for a minute. Eventually I got out.

Was that a real memory or something I imagined? I’m still not sure. But in my memory, it was thrilling.

I imagined I could be James Bond one day, but a girl. Everything looked fancy in his world. I didn’t know anything about martinis, but it all seemed elegant and fun. The gadgets, the cleverness, the confidence. The Bond girl never left a big impression on me. She didn’t do much. And I never understood why he didn’t just marry her, any of them. In spite of all the wonder in my mind, I was also traditional.

Naturally, we kept most of our pranks to ourselves. We didn’t tell our parents everything. I wasn’t a liar, but I didn’t reveal everything either. My mom has always been intuitive and knew something was up. Then she would ask my stepdad to tell me the story of the boy who cried wolf. It’s never pleasant when that story comes up, especially when you catch yourself in the mundane moment of sitting alone at the kitchen table with a parent telling you the wolf story yet again.

And then it happened. The wolf came to town.

I was preparing for a big gymnastics show. Our gymnastics club had moved to a new, fancy location, and there was going to be a big performance, everyone was coming. In my group’s performance, I was in the front, like the leader of the group, like Bond, James Bond.

We were supposed to wear white gymnastics shoes for the show. I had black ones. I told my mom we needed to buy white ones, and somehow she thought I was fabricating it because I just wanted white ones. I insisted I was telling the truth. In those days there was no communication between coaches and parents.

“You’ll get white slippers when you grow out the black ones.” And that was it, people.

On show day, I showed up in my black slippers, not sure if I had a tail between my legs or if I was trying to get away with something. My coach looked at me and said, “Where are your white ones?”

“I don’t have them,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, and moved me all the way to the back so I looked like the accent mark over the first letter of our gymnastics club name. It was shameful, and I sometimes wonder how long I carried that shame with me. Does it ever really go away?

Memory is interesting. Dr. Joe Dispenza says we take an image of a feeling, and that becomes memory.

A childhood memory, whether positive or negative, can stay underneath the surface forever. If it’s not processed, it creates its own energy, which can turn into shame. Even if we don’t consciously think about that exact moment, we may repeat the same thoughts every day.

Studies say we have around 70,000 thoughts a day, and most of them are the same as the day before. Did I carry the shame of the black gymnastics slippers for years? Yeah, I probably did.

But not anymore.

Today, I work with people to help them reveal their stories and understand where they come from and where they want to go. Through EVOKE, they have the opportunity to look at the stories they carry with fresh eyes and heart. We explore their values, their knowledge, their objectives. Just because someone thinks they want something doesn’t mean they truly want it.

We also talk about essence, your flair, which is one of my favorite parts of EVOKE. Essence is about how you show up in your life, for yourself and for others. How it affects your wellbeing. How you carry yourself. Your wardrobe. Your personal space.

We do carry our surroundings with us. The energy of our home comes with us into the spaces we enter. We bring our confidence into a room. And confidence is built from the promises we make to ourselves.

When I ask clients to imagine their personal movie, I say: If you could wave a magic wand, what would your life look like? No limitations. All resources available. You are the star of your own film.

How do you wake up? What do you feel? Are your first thoughts of the day the same as yesterday?

There are many versions of my younger self still with me today, accessorizing and curating. I loved when my mom asked me to babysit my younger siblings. I would redesign the apartment. I’d dress them in the clothes I wanted them to wear. And I’d take photos like I was running my own magazine.

I love to curate.

But it’s not just about outer space. I’ve been curating my inner world too, sorting through feelings, grief, untangling what’s inside. It’s deep. It’s complicated. And yet so simple.

Helping others unpack the story they carry and rewrite the story they actually want, or secretly dream of living, gives me that giddy sense of purpose. Awareness is such a powerful tool, helping us remove shame. Understand where we are now, and why. In some ways, I feel like I have a little bit of Bond power inside. I can help people change things in ways they couldn’t even imagine.

What future are you rehearsing? And does it look anything like the one you imagined as a child?

With love,
Anna