Once you've started adding to your first tier of support, reaching for those things that resonate with you, you can start constructing tier 2 - dabbling. I want to encourage you to dabble, and I choose this word with great care, because I know all too well the nature of the beast we are working with here.

Anticipating a change of any kind - even one that might could reap great intangible benefits for yourself and/or your loved ones - can put your resistance on full alert - def conn six, to be exact. And where resistance thrives, fear is never far behind.

Others before me have outlined in brilliant detail these two facets of your psyche and what obsequious benefactors they claim to be in the name of protecting your best interests. Never mind that their services are usually outdated, outmoded, and generally reek of lameness.

If it requires a bit of trickery to get around these two partners in crime, so be it.

It requires a bit of tenacity as well. It took approaching my 40th birthday before I started giving myself permission to start getting comfortable in my skin. Of course some people never allow themselves that peace of mind. Fear and resistance start to feel like home after awhile, don't they?

But if that stack of self-help books and tapes you've amassed over the years is any indication, you know on some level that the answer to the question, "Is that all there is?" is a vague but nagging NO! Your attempts to bury your dreams under hours of television and videos and restaurant food and shopping and other numbing-down activities just don't quite do the job.

The tenacity of your dreams to reach the light of day, in spite of yourself, keeps you in the game. Dabbling is the kind of non-permanent relationship with some new territory that won't engage the hackles of your resistance or fear quite so fully as, say, being volunteered for a committee chairpersonship that you weren't in attendance to decline.

You get to try something on to see if it serves you, if it fits, and more importantly, if it is any fun.

Reaching lays the groundwork for dabbling. Reaching for those people, places and things that cause sweet commotion in your emotional register sends out a tiny cosmic message every time you do it. "Ah - she's finally letting in the sunshine for these seedlings to grow. Quick, let's fertilize before she chickens out again."

Dabbling allows you to choose which seedlings become part of your remembered repertoire, and which do not. You're allowed to change your mind at any time, based on any new information your dabbling gives you.

As your dabbling successes build, your confidence grows and so does your clarity. It's a snowball effect of epic proportions that others will be able to see; you'll be able to feel.

And if you don't dabble? You remain stuck in the land of what-if's, wanting to dangle a toe into the shallow end of whatever juggernaut of a dream that won't leave you alone, but never quite leaving the "safe" side of the pool.

You sentence yourself and your dreams to a slow and painful death by resignation. This is no small thing, this pain. It's in every heavy sigh you exhale because you are bored, or unhappy, or out of sorts for no discernible reason.

You know - like the one coming out of your mouth right now.