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Though you won’t read it until after the ball has dropped in Times Square, I’m writing this post on December 30th, the cusp of a new year. Traditionally, these are days I reserve for reflecting on goals of the year that has passed and setting out more for the year to come.
It’s also the time of year when I often write a post encouraging you to create goals of your own along with practical tips to help you turn those goals into accomplishments. As you can probably tell, I’m very big on goals.
But today I want to talk about dreams – and pursuing dreams at any age.
Pursuing Dreams at Any Age
Dreams get a bad rap sometimes, especially among people who are big on goals. The reason behind that attitude (not entirely unfounded) is that dreams and wishes untethered to goals and action plans usually go unfulfilled.
Even so, dreams matter. They matter a lot. Because dreams are the first step toward goals fulfilled, talents tapped, opportunities seized.
Almost every worthwhile accomplishment – everything from winning an Olympic medal, to writing a book, to visiting all fifty U.S. states or all 429 national parks, to climbing a mountain, to earning a degree, to singing in a choir, or starting a business, or seeing one of your quilts win a ribbon in a quilt show – began with a dream, a willingness to tap into the things we secretly long for and give them a name.
Children dream a lot, I’ve noticed. Adults far less.
There’s a logic to that, of course. Few people get to pass through adolescence without being pelted by the hard rain of defeat and disappointment, the sad realization that some dreams will never come true.
But there’s an illogic to it as well.
Why Adults Have More Power to Pursue Their Dreams
As adults, we have often have far more ability, resources, and agency when it comes to pursuing dreams at any age than we did when we were children. Not control – defined as the power to bend circumstances and other people to our will – but agency, which is the ability to make choices and plans, and to take actions that increase their odds of success.
The next time some audacious, long-dimmed dream comes floating to the surface of your consciousness, take a moment to consider that before pushing it back down to the depths. Pause long enough to catalog the resources you have at your disposal that were unavailable to you as a child.
Agency matters for dreamers of dreams, and you probably have more of it than you realize.
Even so, you still might feel hesitant about dusting off your old dreams or dreaming up new ones. There may be all kinds of reasons for that, some more valid than others. But it’s likely that much of your hesitancy is rooted in fear, specifically fear of failure.
I get it. I really do.
From Hidden Manuscript to Published Author
After spending four years of my life writing and re-writing a novel, the fear of failure and the very real likelihood rejection drove me to hide those pages in a drawer for more than a year, trying my best to forget about all the effort, hours, and yes, dreams I have invested in them.
Eventually, I realized that being rejected couldn’t possibly be worse than spending the rest of my life wondering what might have been.
Twenty years later, and just four months from publishing my eighteen novel, The Book Club for Troublesome Women, I’m so glad I shouted down my fears of failure and took a chance on my dreams.
It could all have turned out differently, of course. The odds were long from the get-go, and I received scores of rejections before somebody finally said yes. Had a dice rolled another number, I might never have published even one book, let alone twenty-two. Who can say?
But here’s what I know for certain.
If I’d never found the courage to open that drawer and dust off the dream that wouldn’t leave me alone, the chance of seeing it come true would have been exactly zero.
As business executive and author Chester Barnard wrote, “To try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been.”
So true.
Even if my dream of becoming a published author hadn’t come to pass, even if that singular “yes” in the vast sea of rejections had never come my way, I would still have known the joy of creating and the satisfaction that accompanies effort. And I would never have had to spend my life wondering what might have been.
Dreams Have No Deadlines: Why It’s Never Too Late to Chase Your Passion
Though we’ve never met in person, I’m pretty sure that a lady named Kim Hale would agree one hundred percent.
After years of rejection and discouragement, Kim Hale left New York. She also left behind her dream of dancing in a Broadway show. But during the pandemic, she started dancing again. At the age of 56, she pulled that dream out of mothballs, moved back to New York, and started auditioning.
Apart from a one-night-only, special appearance in the show Chicago, her dream has yet to be realized. But she hasn’t given up, and she’s learned a lot along the way. (If you’ve a couple of minutes after you finish reading this post, watch this interview with her. It’s very inspiring!).
Kim’s personal mantra, “Dreams have no deadlines,” has a resounding ring of truth for me. Though the voice of fear will try to convince us otherwise, past failure doesn’t eliminate the possibility of future success. Nor does age.
Pursuing dreams at any age really is possible. Even so, our earthly existence passes quickly, and days are too precious to waste in wondering what might have been.
And so, as we begin another trip around the sun, I hope you’ll take some time to set some goals for the year to come. As well as put some time to outlining the concrete steps to help you achieve them.
Before you do that, take a deep breath and open the drawers of your mind. Blow the dust from your archived dreams. This could be the year to bring new energy to your dreams, and to your life.
