COCO is a Dream Accelerator. What does that mean?

With the launch of our new website, we unveiled a concept that we’ve been playing with for some: Dream Acceleration. We say that “Coco is a dream accelerator — a destination for building your venture and exploring new ideas in the company of other creators.” All this stems from our mission:

Inspire and enable people to live out their dreams

So, what’s up with all this talk of dreams? Isn’t it a bit new-agey? Don’t we need more doing and less dreaming? GTD, right? After all, venture capitalists can’t invest in dreams.
What do we mean by dreaming?
Dream is a word that gets thrown around a lot. Often it’s a word that gets thrown at people, as in “you’re just a dreamer” or “that’s a pipe dream.” The connotation being that dreaming is either negative, or at the very least, ineffective. But, if you’ll allow me to point to the dictionary definition of the word, you’ll see that an interesting distinction emerges.

dream
verb
contemplate the possibility of doing something or that something might be the case.

Possibility. That, in a word, is what we’re talking about when we talk about dreaming. It’s you, imagining that there is a possible future in which you are being:

• connected
• fulfilled
• giving
• richer
• happier
• successful (however you choose define that otherwise worthless word)

And it’s you, actively pursuing those possibilities with confidence and passion.
What don’t we mean by dreaming?

• Dreaming isn’t the same as being hopeful. If it were enough to just hope for positive outcomes, then we’d all be wildly successful. It takes both choice and action to actually create positive outcomes:
  • Choosing and embracing a positive outcome, versus letting circumstances, emotions and fears determine your attitude.
  • Taking immediate and tangible actions in the direction of your choice.
• We’re also not necessarily talking about quitting your job. Some of you may remember that we’ve held classes in the past as part of Jump School, which was geared toward helping people jump into their own business. One of the things we’ve realized since then is that while “jumping” might be in the cards for some people, it isn’t the only way for someone to accelerate their dreams. There is so much you can do right where you are to become someone who plays big by welcoming and pursuing possibility.

How can you accelerate dreams?
Coming back to the idea of dream acceleration, is it actually possible to accelerate the process of imagining good things being possible in your life and then creating those things?
My answer is an emphatic YES. But it’s not easy. Counterintuitively, it’s not the work itself that’s so daunting. The hard part is changing our default attitudes and instead adopting attitudes that uncover more possibilities and put us in a position to react to them:

• Thinking “maybe” as you look into the future. “Maybe I am not crazy in thinking that I could be successful (or happy, fulfilled, etc.).”
• Saying “yes” to new requests, as in: “Yes, I will do that thing, attend that event, take that trip, try that strange dish, take that chance…”
• Saying “hello” to strangers. Do you see new relationships as a distraction? Think of them as a gateway to new opportunities and ideas. “How do you do, stranger? This could the beginning of a beautiful friendship!”
• Making action your default mode. Many of us have been trained to analyze exhaustively and demonstrate likely success before committing to a path. Instead, how about using action (e.g., proposing, pitching, prototyping, testing, designing, building, etc.) as the means of creating your way to success? Act and adjust. Act and adjust.

That, in a nutshell, is the essence of dream acceleration. It’s a journey of maybes, yesses and hellos and continuous action steps.
How can Coco help you accelerate your dreams?
By itself, working in a shared workspace like Coco has huge potential to accelerate you in your pursuits. Coco is an environment that organically encourages meaningful networking. You will most likely make new friends, which is simply good for your well-being. With the diversity of professionals at Coco, you’re also likely to encounter more people who can help you with different aspects of life and business. All this opens up new career avenues and increases the ease with which you can conceive of and launch new ventures.
But we’d rather not leave things entirely to chance and serendipity. So we’ve introduced some cool new resources to encourage and support our members’ efforts to pursue their dreams. And we have a few new things coming online. That’ll be the topic of our next post!
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