This Year, Give Up on Your Dreams

New year, new you: time to set some intentions and fail to achieve them, then feel guilty about it. You know the drill, right?

If that doesn’t appeal to you, here’s an alternative: make this your year of giving up on dreams.

Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds. In fact, giving up on your dreams can have the odd effect of leaving you feeling much more excited about your future, due to the sudden appearance of all-new dreams.

This is because you can only have a limited number of dreams. I mean, sure, you can make a 100-item bucket list, but chances are many of the items on the list will be somewhat random or repetitive. It’s more likely that the number of active dreams you’re pursuing at any given time is much smaller.

In Which I Decide Never To Fly … As a Pilot

For example, I once thought about taking flying lessons, with the goal of getting a pilot’s certificate. I love to fly, or at least I love being up in the air, moving between cities and watching the world go by.

So when I first had the idea of learning to fly, I thought it was a logical fit. I like planes, I like being in motion, I like adventure in general. Makes sense, right?

The more I looked into it, though, the more I realized what was involved. The training would take a long time. It would be expensive. Most discouraging of all, at the end of the process, all I would ever be able to do is fly very small planes short distances.

The research process led me to think about what I really liked about flying. What I liked most about being up in the air was daydreaming on an Airbus A380, or perhaps a Boeing 787, drifting across the ocean while a flight attendant brought me coffee and sparkling water.

It turns out that’s not quite how it works when you fly tiny planes on your own! You actually have to pay close attention and keep the daydreaming to a minimum.

Worst of all, there are no flight attendants offering beverages and snack packets. The space is a little cramped, with no lie-flat seats or AV consoles offering 80 different movies on demand. Maybe there’s room to bring a cooler of La Croix up in the air with you, but it all seems a little too close for comfort.

Of course, don’t misread the analogy: lots of other people enjoy taking flying lessons and getting their pilot’s certificate. For me, thinking about the idea taught me more about what I really wanted. I’m happy for someone else to fly the plane so I can relax!

Most People Should Never Write a Book

Now let’s take the opposite example, where something really is my dream—but I think most other people should choose something else. This example, if you haven’t already realized, is about writing a book.

Personally, I love writing books. I didn’t write my first book as a marketing tool; I wrote it because I had something to say. And then I kept going, writing seven more books, learning about the industry as I went along, going on tours, trying out different ideas, experiencing both failure and success in different ways—more or less the typical route for a very atypical career.

So that’s me, but most people who say they want to write a book, I’m convinced, probably shouldn’t.

Let me be clear: this isn’t because they’re dumb or couldn’t figure it out. I’m sure they could! It’s just because, well, there are more reasons NOT to write a book than there are to do it.

Such as? Well, number one, it’s easy to start writing a book, but you have to overcome a lot of inertia to finish. This seems logical enough. Yet I’d guess that a great majority of people who start to write a book fail to understand how daunting this fact can be.

Number two, even if you do finish the book, then you have to figure out how you will get your book to people who want to read it. The reality here is: THIS IS HARD. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

Even if you write a bestseller, the number of people who will actually read your book is shockingly small. If you’re all about “capturing attention,” you should spend more time on TikTok.

I don’t mean any of this sarcastically. I love books and am very glad I kept pursuing the path. At the same time, I really do believe that most people who dream about writing a book will probably be happier if they decide to do something else instead.

So, who knows, if you’ve been trying to write a book forever and it’s not working out for whatever reason—maybe give up on that dream?

And don’t feel bad about it if you do. There are many other, better dreams out there for you.

Conclusion

There’s a difference between giving up on something because it seems hard, and wisely moving on because you know you can only do so much at one time.

I used the examples of taking flying lessons and writing books because, well, it’s me. You might not relate to either of them. Do yourself a favor and think about your dreams. Really think about them!

If you aren’t actively working towards those dreams right now, maybe they’ll end up serving someone else better. And then, all of a sudden (or perhaps in short succession) you’ll discover something really cool that was previously hidden from view, afraid to take up space in your dream-world that can only contain a finite set of items.

That’s my suggestion for you today. During this “New Year, New You” season of merriment—consider giving up on your dreams. You could certainly do worse, and it might lead you to something much better.

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Images: 1, 2, 3