Doers feel right when their world is in order.
And doers can drive everyone nuts, too...
They are always prepared, always on time, always sensible. They are wise beyond their years, but they can miss out on so much of life when they're forging ahead with their "get-it-done-now" blinders on.
There’s no head in the clouds for these folks … both of their feet are planted firmly on solid ground. Sometimes they are absolutely correct and we need to follow their lead ... cease all the playing and get to work.
But sometimes they can get out of balance and we need to love them enough to gently encourage them to put aside the work for a while and take time to refresh those batteries with some rest and play.
Stand on a beach at sunrise with a doer, and they will be just as enthralled with the grandeur of the panorama before them as you are. They are seeing and experiencing the same scene as you, and they are just as in awe of the beauty around them … just like you.
And, lucky you, they’ll be the ones to make sure everybody knows when it’s time to head back home and get some breakfast. After breakfast, they’ll be the ones making beds and paying taxes. Doers are a bit the party poopers ... the grown-ups in the room.
If plans for the afternoon include a bike ride, they’ll take care of the preparations and details. While the dreamers are dancing around impatiently – Let’s GO already! – the doers will make sure tires are pumped up and everybody’s got their water bottles, phones, and helmets.
Later that afternoon on the bike ride, when you get separated from the group by a couple of miles, out on the trail a rabbit darts out in front of you. You slam on the brakes, veer off the path, bang into a large rock and over you go, busting a tire, bending the bike frame, banging up a knee and twisting an ankle when the bike falls on you.
But lucky you ... your noggin was protected, you’ve got a phone to call for help, and water while you wait in the hot sun. Thank goodness for those wonderful, practical, boring doers!
Reality can crash in on doers, too, when they burn themselves out. Work is important, but it needs to be balanced out with some rest and play. Life isn’t all about doing, and working goes much better with a fresh, rested body and mind.
All of us have a bit of the dreamer and a bit of the doer in us, though we each may favor one tendency over the other. We’re forced to make choices and that creates a bit of tension in daily life … we’d rather play when we should be working and some of us won’t stop working long enough to play.
Dreamers might need to grow up. Doers might need to lighten up. All that wonderful tension that is part of daily life can make our storytelling come alive when we create characters of both types and pit them against each other.
Beyond the obvious kids-vs-grown-ups type of scenarios, make your characters a good mix of dreamers and doers.
Maybe the main character is a doer faced with some seemingly unreachable dream or goal … surround him with dreamer friends who will inspire him to keep going and maybe a nerdy doer friend to help him find the steps to get him there.
Maybe your main character is a dreamer with some fantastic vision of what could be possible, and no one else can see … give him some doer friends who can’t envision his goal, but believe in him anyhow. For his nemesis, how about a bully doer who’s constantly getting in the way and blocking progress in reaching the goal? Maybe his nemesis isn’t a person at all, but some inner conflict he keeps bumping against.
The push-pull of dreamers and doers creates tension and energy in real life and in stories. Sometimes within the heart and mind of a single person, but generally between different people. Sometimes they line up against each other, like the kids and the grown-ups in some children’s stories.
But occasionally, there’s the rare grown-up who remembers what it was like to be a kid. And of course the kid will eventually be a grown-up. Now they both get a different perspective and they wisely see that both sides are needed. No opposing view points here, but rather complimentary viewpoints, and when both sides work together with their own unique input, amazing things can be accomplished.
Next week we’ll take a look at some real-life dreamers and doers who came together and the amazing results …
Thank you