This is something my husband and business partner – John van Zyl wrote awhile ago. It was inspired by a song he wrote and sang with the name “Everybody Needs A Dream”.

I was sitting at my piano, playing around with this really nice melody that had come into my head about a week before. I reckon it was when I was having a round of golf with my best mate Bazza.

He was winning the round, Bazza was having one of his good days hitting the flamin’ ball straight down that mongrel of a fairway every tee off.

On a bad day he couldn’t hit a cow in the arse with a hand full of wheat. Anyway it was really weird how these melodies would just appear in my head out of nowhere, at any time.

Usually I was miles away from a piano or guitar and they would be down the gurgler by the time I got back to my joint.   But some of these tunes would just keep on keepin’ on reappearing days, weeks or sometimes months later as if demanding attention.

I’d usually end up using these for a song at some time.   So, here I am at the piano, this beautiful tune going around in my head. Through the window of this hundred old house, the skies are dark, menacing, the lightening flashing and the thunder booming (like a bloke banging a couple of 44 gallon drums together in the dunny).

The rain is pounding on the window. Inside my small lounge room it’s cozy and warm, with the open fire burning nicely.   I started thinking or drifting or both at the same time, back to goals and dreams I’ve had (my expression when thinking and drifting at the same time is dangerously close to looking like a stunned mullet. )

How it was exciting having that vision of where I was going or what I was going to be.   It was like having a purpose in life apart from all the normal stuff we all do. Most of the time I didn’t have much money but it didn’t bother me, because I knew one day I would have all the money I needed but more important I’d be doing something I loved to do.

My father thought I was a dreamer, and he was right.   We never got really close because we had such different beliefs.  Why did I act like I was already a successful musician?  Why did I buy expensive clothes that I couldn’t afford? Why did I live in expensive suburbs sharing with 3 or 4 other people when I could afford my own place in the cheaper suburbs?

I was just living my dream! I believed I was a successful musician and took the action I needed to raise my standards and aspirations. As Carol McCall says in her article Listening (And Acting) for Money, I was living out my fantasy, accompanied by positive action, and it was a powerful vision.

My Dad took positive action for a fantasy of his too. His fantasy became a powerful vision, and because he took positive action, his dream was unstoppable.

He told me once that after WWII, a lot of Europe was war-torn. In particular, the city where we lived, Rotterdam had been almost flattened by bombs.   Dad told me there were these big signs up around the city advertising Australia….. The land of sunshine, a new life, plenty of work for tradesmen, golden beaches.

He made up his mind we were going to Oz no matter what. Really that was his and my mother’s dream. If it wasn’t their dream or vision they wouldn’t have been able to justify the sacrifices and traumatic decisions they had to make. read more about “Everybody Needs A Dream”

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