“Follow your dreams” is a kind of slogan that we hear over and over. It sounds great and empowering and I’m all for it except for the times when I think it’s totally OK to give up on your dreams. Wait, what?! Am I telling you it’s OK to give up on your dreams? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. And not only that, I also want you to know that you can give up on your dreams and not be a failure.
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I learned this lesson about giving up on certain dreams a while back, but recently it hit home again because I was watching the show “Mozart in the Jungle” and one of the characters, Alex, who is a dancer is at a point in his life where he is realizing that perhaps he no longer wants to pursue that dancing dream he’s worked so hard for. He’s tired of starving himself and maybe he’d rather act or model. “Maybe it’s not the end of the world if we don’t do these things we said we wanted to do when we were 5 years old,” he says and when he said that I had to stop, replay and write the quote down because I wholeheartedly agree.
OMG, how can we be expected to keep dreaming the dreams we had when we were little or the dreams we had even 10 years ago? Things change, we change and sometimes it’s OK if our dreams change too.
Now, I’m not telling you to give up on your dreams because you are afraid or don’t want to put the work in that it takes to achieve those dreams. Those are not good reasons to let go of dreams. What I am saying is that if a dream no longer serves you, if a dream no longer works for you, if you are sticking to a dream only because you don’t want to seem like a failure, then it’s OK to dump the dream and find another one.
How do you know if it’s time to ditch a dream? Well, it’s really up to you and will take a lot of soul searching, but if the feeling you get when you let a dream go is relief like a big weight has been taken off your shoulders, then chances are that dream was weighing you down and you were ready to let it go.
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The dreams that last a lifetime and are worth hanging on to are the kind of dreams that won’t go away even if you try to let them go. You won’t feel relief when you try to let go of them, instead you feel disappointment. You aren’t doing yourself any favors if you try and let go of those kinds of dreams because you are still dreaming them, just like you aren’t doing yourself any favors if you stick to dreams that no longer make you feel dreamy.
Have you let go of any dreams and felt better because of it?
Honestly, I don’t know if I even know how to give up. I’ve wanted to many times on things in life but my dad drilled it into my head so hard that failure was not an option that I think sometimes I hold on to things too long. But, I’m getting better. Since having kids, my priorities have changed and it doesn’t feel so much like giving up as moving on and evolving. My dreams have changed and that’s okay. I still have big dreams but now they include other people too.
Yup, I feel like my “movin’ on” muscles have been seriously underdeveloped.
I like this post and your points are valid ones. It is okay…….
you can spare yourself a good amount of sadness, etc.! I have had things that never came together, and sometimes the mere thought still stings, but some things are like whew! so glad it didn’t!
Well put.
Sometimes the dreams we had simply don’t fit us anymore and then it’s time to move on.
slehan at juno dot com
yeah but don’t give up on your blog which I suspect might have been or possibly still is part of a dream. Back in my 50’s (wow that phrase sounds old and I have not used it much) I gave up the dream of being the founder or CEO of a tech company.
Oh, no, not giving up on the blog. Where else would I get all this stuff out?