December 16, 2021
Power Up Your Dreams:
Moving from Self-Defeat to Self-Belief
Gloria Carpenter
Aviva Publishing (2021)
ISBN: 978-1-63618-116-5
New Book Demonstrates How We Can Pursue Our Dreams
In Power Up Your Dreams: Moving from Self-Defeat to Self-Belief, singer, performer, and life coach Gloria Carpenter shares what it takes to make dreams come true. However, she is no Pollyanna. She knows that most of us are filled with self-doubt, have self-defeating behaviors, and are often too negative or fearful to think we can achieve our goals.
Before showing us how to move forward, Gloria shares that she can relate to where we may be right now. She understands what it is to feel powerless. She first felt that way when her father left her family. She was crushed when her mother told her, “Your father isn’t coming back home, honey.” She states, “That statement had an immense impact on my inner journey of not feeling lovable, worthy, or good enough because the first man I loved decided not to stick around.” What then developed was a life of subconscious false stories about herself and how she wasn’t loveable or worthy of happiness. What she didn’t realize until later was that these stories were false and the only one stopping her from living her best life was herself.
Now, in this powerful book, Gloria demonstrates how we can go from feeling powerless to capitalizing upon the innate power we all have to move forward and live the lives we dream of having.
For Gloria, what largely helped her move out of her negative mindset was a passion for the arts. In school and young adulthood, she pursued music, theater, and dance. They became her safe place for expressing herself and made her feel alive. When she was recognized for her talents, it boosted her confidence. She knows we all have talents and areas of interest we are passionate about, and when we find those and focus on them, we can begin to change how we feel about ourselves and create a new vision for our lives.
Gloria has written this book to help people fast-track building a life they love. She firmly believes that, “No matter what you endured in your past that caused you to think less of yourself, you are good enough, you are worthy of having it all, and you deserve to have the life of your dreams!” What follows are thirteen powerful chapters to help readers overcome everything that is holding them back and tools to help them move toward their goals.
Beginning with the first chapter, Gloria talks about how we have to become willing to leave our comfort zone and take a risk to move forward. She helps us develop a mindset of becoming fearless as we take action to change our situations. What action to take is determined through asking ourselves, in Chapter 2, some thought-provoking questions and engaging in some writing exercises to help us envision the ideal life we want.
The chapters that follow teach us how to pursue those goals. We discover how to access our innate hidden power. We develop tools to start believing in ourself and changing our former distorted stories about who we are into stories about who we can be. We become self-confident, and we begin to believe success is possible for us. We learn how to avoid roadblocks to our progress like perfectionism and procrastination, and we learn to quit having anxiety about the future and simply trust that all will develop for the best. Eventually, we will find ourselves living intentionally, making choices that keep us joyful and purposeful while we rock our world.
I enjoyed Power Up Your Dreams for many reasons, including that Gloria loves theatre and music as much as I do, and because her personal stories were inspiring. I also loved her use of theatre metaphors. Drawing upon the old adage that all the world is a stage, she reminds us, “Try not to live your life as a character in someone else’s play.” Plus, I appreciated how she sprinkled wonderfully inspiring quotes throughout the book. There are so many of these, but my favorite was probably one from Richard Rhor: “All stress comes from not accepting what’s happening in the present moment. If you accept your what-is, you can find contentment.” This is so true, and something I have often struggled with. It was a helpful reminder to quit worrying about the past or future and to live in the present and accept what currently is. All this worrying is largely about a need to control outcomes. Gloria reminds us to learn to trust our current situation because if we let it, life will guide us toward our highest potential. She states, “The Universe knows how to get you where you want and need to be and will do so in its own perfect timing.” One of the most powerful statements in the book is “everything happens for you and not to you.”
I’d like to end with mention of a metaphor Gloria uses about building a sandcastle. She states that after she built her castle, “Eventually, the tide caught up to my castle and washed it away. I had no pictures of what I had just spent time putting together, but the experience of joy was lasting enough to make me want to do it over and over again. I didn’t know it then, but I realized later that this is the perfect way to live our lives. Do what you love, stay fully in the moment, experience the joy, and detach from the outcome. And like the ocean itself, stay in the flow and ride the tide peacefully in and out.”
In Power Up Your Dreams, Gloria teaches us just how to ride that tide peacefully. The book made me both excited and calm about my future—surprisingly those feelings can coexist. I highly recommend you get with the flow by taking this journey with Gloria.
For more information about Gloria Carpenter and Power Up Your Dreams, visit www.PowerUpYourDreams.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
