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Q & A with MATTHEW DICKS, Author of Someday is Today

Someday — when the kids are grown, when work lightens up, when I win the lottery — I am going to start that business, become a yoga teacher, write that book, develop that app, paint that picture, finish my degree, pick up that musical instrument.

There’s a Japanese proverb: “The day you decide to do it is your lucky day.” But how do we make the decision to actually start and complete creative things? This is the question that author and nationally acclaimed storyteller Matthew Dicks explores in Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life.

We hope you’ll enjoy this Q & A with Matthew about the book.

Tell us about Someday is Today and what inspired you to write it.

I wear a lot of hats: Author. Elementary school teacher. Storyteller. Consultant. Speaking coach. Minister. Wedding DJ. Not to mention father, cat owner, husband, poker player, and mediocre gofer.

I do a lot of things. As a result, the question that I am asked most frequently is, “How do you do all the things that you do?” This book seeks to answer that question.

I have spent much of my life devising strategies that have allowed me to make my dreams come true while still finding plenty of time to be a normal human being, with plenty of time for friends, family, Netflix, and laundry. Some relate to the efficient use of time. Others focus on maintaining positivity and momentum in a world so often awash with negativity. Still others ask you to examine the way you make decisions in your life to ensure that your choices lead to the best possible outcomes.

Lots of people dream of doing something great someday – writing a book, building a business, making art, traveling the world, changing the fortunes of those less fortunate – but most people die having never fulfilled their dreams.

It’s an ongoing tragedy for so many people who believe that there is an endless supply of somedays. This book seeks to end the tragedy of someday by helping people turn somedays into today.

How important is hope when it comes to the realization of our creative dreams?

Hope is critical to the success of the creator. Hopelessness leads to apathy and inaction. Unless you believe that today can be brighter and better than yesterday, there is little reason to move forward with purpose and no reason to be enthusiastic about the possibilities of the day and the future. Knowing and believing that things can get better, progress is possible, and dreams can come true is essential to anyone dreaming of doing anything worthwhile.

You say in the book that “someday” is might be your least favorite word in the English dictionary. Why is that?

“Someday” is an insidious word that allows people to put off their dreams to another day. The problem is that our supply of somedays is finite, but by the time most people recognize this, it’s too late.

What is the One-Hundred-Year-Old Plan and how can it help us live with out fear of regret?

The problem with decision making is that so often, we make decisions about how we spend our time and effort based upon the next hour, the day, the next week, the next month, and even the next year. This may feel good in the moment, but if we extend our view across a lifetime, we discover that making decision based upon short terms wants and needs often leads to a life filled with unfulfilled dreams and endless regret.

The One-Hundred-Year-Old Plan asks you to look to the future when making a decision about how to spend your time and effort. Rather than relying on the version of yourself existing in the moment, look ahead to the one-hundred-year old version of yourself – the version who is looking back upon your life and judging the way you’ve spent your time – and ask that version of yourself how they would like you to spend the next hour. That version of yourself knows that friends and family comes before Netflix. Working towards your dreams is more important than time spent on social media or video games.

It hard to make decisions based upon the here and the now. But when we ask our future self what we want from our current self, answers are often much more obvious and decisions are better made.

What advice do you have to offer those whose inner perfectionist is preventing them from starting a creative project?

Understand that creative people make terrible things all the time. In order to do something good or even great, you must make mistakes. You must produce poor results. You must accept the fact that every single person on this planet who has ever made something great has also made many, many bad things. Perfection almost always equates to inaction. The need for perfections causes dreams to remain perpetually unfulfilled. As the creator of things, we must simply begin, even if our first second, and millionth steps are miserable and better forgotten. It’s better to be moving forward, making terrible things, than standing still and making nothing.

What is the most important thing you hope readers will take away from your book?

I hope that people finish the book believing that success is attainable, dreams can come true, and progress is possible. All of the things we want from life can be achieved if we focus on how we live each day. Our lives are an assemblage of every tiny decision that we make, and the course of our lives are determined in great part by this assemblage of tiny decisions. Small changes in how we live, piled atop one another and stretched out over time, can yield enormous results. My book seeks to help people see those choices more clearly and make these choices more strategically. There are no magic pills, but there are a multitude of small, significant ways that we can improve our chances of success every hour of every day. I hope my readers believe this and begin today.

Someday is today.

Matthew Dicks is the author of Someday Is Today and nine other books. A bestselling novelist, nationally recognized storyteller, and award-winning elementary schoolteacher, he teaches storytelling and communications at universities, corporate workplaces, and community organizations. Dicks has won multiple Moth GrandSLAM story competitions and, together with his wife, created the organization Speak Up to help others share their stories. Visit him online at www.MatthewDicks.com.

Excerpted from the book from Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life. Copyright ©2022 by Matthew Dicks. Printed with permission from New World Library.

I met my best friend about eight years ago, and we have developed an extraordinarily close friendship. Many people say we're more like lovers than friends, though we're both straight, and our relationship is platonic. Here's the weird part: Everyone thinks we're sisters. We look incredibly alike; have the same build, etc. We work out together, and we're practically identical in terms of our strength, endurance, etc. When I'm out with her and her sister, everyone thinks that I am her sister, as opposed to recognizing that her real sister is the one who is related. One day it just hit me: we must have been twins in a past life! What do you think? Wouldn't twins from past lives seek each other out in future lives? How does the whole twin thing work anyway? Do twins plan to be twins before they incarnate?
- Jill

Susyn:

Reincarnation is a fascinating subject, the study of which is relatively young. As time goes on, we learn more and more about the relationships we have formed throughout the ages and the various forms they can take. For example, because people can incarnate as any gender and in all sorts of different relationship configurations, it's not uncommon to find that we've been married to, parented by, or even been parents to someone who seems to have no connection to us in this lifetime.

It seems that the more we discover about reincarnation, the more questions arise. Now that we have a few centuries of photos and historical documents to compare notes with along with video tape, we've entered an exciting age in which we can actually validate some of our past life memories!

People who are lucky enough to discover pictures or other visual evidence of a past life often notice an uncanny resemblance to themselves, meaning the photographs from the past life look remarkably similar to how they look today. Because you and your friend have similar physical features and are often mistaken for sisters, it could very well be that you were sisters or even twins in a past life.

People tend to reincarnate into the same family groups. When they don't, eventually the universe guides them to reconnect with important people with whom they shared past lives. As per their destiny, they are always being moved toward the souls they are most deeply connected to on a soul level, so it would be no surprise for women who were twin sisters in a past life to meet in this life and form an immediate bond.

Some believe that before we are born, we make certain choices about the family we will become a part of, the friends we'll make, and the kinds of experiences we'll need to have that lifetime. Odds are good that both you and your friend agreed to meet up again in this lifetime when the conditions were right for you to do so.

Biologically, identical twins share the same egg and genes, while fraternal twins are two separate eggs that share a womb. In both cases, the bond between twins is incredibly strong. They tend to share a deep understanding that others can't fathom. The fact that you feel so close to your friend strongly suggests that you two were indeed twins in a past life.

In my view, reincarnation has no limits, so the answer to each of your questions is YES: all of these things are possible. I encourage you and your friend to get a past-life reading to learn more. Kajama has many gifted psychics who can help you uncover the spiritual foundation of your extraordinary bond.

*****

Oceania:

Your question on the significance of multiple births from the perspective of reincarnation is fascinating. Since this isn't my area of expertise, however, I'm going to look at your situation from a psychological perspective. It is well-documented that we're drawn to what is familiar, which means you and your friend may have gravitated towards one another in the first place because you looked alike, and stayed for eight years because you ARE alike.

You may be kindred spirits (people who share the same values) or you may be soulmates (people who share a path for some period and serve as catalysts for one another's spiritual growth). Your sense that the two of you were twins suggests you long for a sense of acceptance and familial connection that you may not have experienced earlier in your life.

It's worth examining whether either of you has a life partner. Extraordinarily close friendships can create tension at home. People sometimes cope with unhappy marriages by pouring time and energy into friendships that meet their emotional needs. While this approach serves to distract or fill in the gaps, it neglects to address underlying problems.

If neither of you is coupled, you might explore whether your close friendship prevents you from dating and finding a love match. Sometimes people hide out from relationships in friendship. It's easy to love someone exactly like you because there's little cause for conflict. Nevertheless, most of our growth comes from interactions with those who are NOT like us. Differences create challenges that require us to stretch beyond our comfort zones and expand our points of view.

I have a client in her thirties who has been best friends with a man since they were in high school together. While he is content in their friendship, she keeps hoping they'll become more. Only recently did she realize that her investment in the friendship prevents her from finding a man who could not only be her friend but also her lover, husband and the father of her children.

A final consideration is whether either of you suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, which is characterized by intensely close relationships. These passionate love/hate connections tend to fluctuate between dramatic breakups and inevitable reunions.

Whatever the reason for the closeness you share, your friendship is a treasure. It either provides you with a safe haven of love and support that will enable you to meet life's challenges, or it's going push you to examine yourself and change so that you're less like your friend and more like your true self.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.