Do you have dreams?

Of course you do.

They are the things we think about over the months and years and in the quiet moments of our day – the things that light a fire under our tails whenever we start talking about them. They might be relics carried over from childhood (“I want to be a famous author”) or a more recent aspiration (“I want to start a vegan food truck”).

From the time we’re children, we’re drawn to certain things – for whatever reason. We discover our talents. Our interests. They shift, evolve, and change over time but we will always have dreams.

We could allow these dreams to simply remain fantasies that visit us while we go about our workday lives, but most of us, deep down, aren’t satisfied with this. Our dreams follow us around; they might be quiet specters in the background, or they might be actively pestering us.

Why? Because in each of us is the potential to do something great. And we know this.

You Do Have Enough Time

Almost two thousand years ago, while living in exile on a harsh and rugged island, stripped of his worldly possessions, a man named Lucius Annaeus Seneca sat down and wrote a letter to an old friend.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.”

In it, he wrote:

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.”

If Seneca is right – and considering he was a philosopher and personal advisor to the emperor, I don’t see any reason to doubt him – then it’s not too late. As long as there is time left, we can invest it well and do the things that matter most to us.

So why is this so hard to do?

Why is so hard to, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “go confidently in the direction of our dreams”?

“Real life,” you might answer. “Family. Money. Responsibilities.”

At first glance, these can seem like legitimate reasons. We can’t all live the micro-farming, tiny home lifestyle that Thoreau did. Not all of us can set up an artist’s studio or a home office and suddenly become self-actualized.

But is it impossible to go in the direction of our dreams if we live a “normal” life with normal adult responsibilities? Using that logic, only hermits and financially independent people have this luxury.

Instead, I believe, there are two main dream killers – “dream monsters” – that either destroy or maim our dreams before we’re able to give any real life to them. These monsters aren’t obvious to us – in fact, the reason they’re so deadly is because they’re almost invisible.

But if we don’t slay them first, we will run out of time before we can live out our full potential.

Dream Monster #1: Present Bias

Unless you are a truly unusual person, you struggle with procrastination. 

We procrastinate errands, emails, homework – anything we can get away with. That’s (probably) why deadlines were invented. Sometimes our deadline is an actual date, and sometimes it’s needing to pay the bills. In this fashion, we manage to fulfill our obligations while still procrastinating.

When it comes to our dreams, though, our deadline is our actual day of death. We can theoretically procrastinate until the end of our lives. Or until we are too old or weak, which is itself a kind of death.

That’s because there’s nothing to hold us accountable except ourselves, and we’re usually terrible at doing that.

Procrastination is not the ultimate cause, either. It’s a symptom.

The ultimate cause (well, one ultimate cause) behind why we procrastinate our dreams is present bias.

Put simply, present bias is the human tendency to focus on what’s in front of us and do what seems easiest or most rewarding right now.

That’s it, in a nutshell.

The present is real and concrete.

The future is abstract and fuzzy.

But it gets even hairier than that. The future, you could argue, isn’t even truly real. Any one of us could die any moment in a car crash or other freak incident. That’s why we’re inundated with sentiments like, “The only time is now”, and “You have to live in the present.”

In fact, philosophers have debated for centuries whether or not the future is even “real.” (Unsurprisingly, no one’s been able to reach an agreement).

And while it’s true that technically tomorrow isn’t promised, and the only reality is what’s happening right now…

It’s also not natural (or logical) to live as though there is no tomorrow because 99.9% of us will in fact live to see another day. This means it is important we pay our bills, brush our teeth, and show up to appointments.

What gets tricky is when we’re talking about the distant future. The distant future (months, but more often years) is how long it takes for dreams to go from being theory to reality.

And that’s where people get stuck.

It’s fun and wonderful to dream about your bestselling novel that’s going to change the world, but actually sitting in front of your word processor and typing out a terrible first draft? Not so much. In fact, a lot of the time your dream will feel more real in your mind than it does as you actually start working toward it.

That’s because we’re great at imagining things, but not so great at perfectly executing them. There’s a disconnect.

One of the best weapons for killing present bias is to think of your future self as a distinct and separate person. Someone who you’re responsible for helping and taking care of.

This is why it’s so easy to stay stuck in the initial dream phase, imagining things will be magically different “one day” while in the meantime we seek more immediate gratification, whether it’s something wholesome like spending time with friends or something unwholesome like doomscrolling. We get so focused on present comforts and emotions that we hand wave away the future, assuming that it will take care of itself somehow.

Present bias is a really hard monster to kill.

But there are ways to kill it.

One of the best weapons for killing present bias is to think of your future self as a distinct and separate person. Someone who you’re responsible for helping and taking care of. Someone who’s looking to you, hoping you’ll make the right choice, knowing their fate is in your hands.

Thinking “I’ll feel better if I empty the dishwasher now,” isn’t very motivating. But thinking, “Future Brenna will be very grateful to me if she sees that the dishwasher is empty tomorrow morning” is a lot more motivating and gives me the shot in the arm I need to overcome inertia.

“Sure, but it’s easy to imagine how you’ll feel tomorrow morning. How do you stay motivated for Twenty-Years-Into-the-Future You?”

It’s the same principle – it just takes more effort, more refinement, and more thought experimentation. The more you think about the future, the more real it becomes to you. (Tiffany Aliche, the financial expert of “Budgetnista” fame, makes the importance of planning for retirement more real by calling her future senior self “Wanda.”)

Present bias is insidious, but overcome-able. It’s the lesser of the two monsters – a smaller, annoying monster that distracts you until you catch onto what it’s doing and put an end to its shenanigans.

Dream Monster #2: Fear

I believe that the deepest, most profound reason for us not pursuing our dreams is fear.

Not just fear of failure, but fear that we’ll find out that it’s somehow “not meant to be.” That it was foolish, silly, and naïve. Or greedy, selfish, and arrogant.

It’s possible that your dream is silly, but I’d argue that it’s far more likely that you feel embarrassed to pursue it or even share it with others because of the fear of ridicule or disapproval. Including your own disapproval.

Wanting to do something that requires a lot of effort upfront with no immediate promise of payment is hard and scary and it doesn’t meet with most of society’s approval. Not only that, but most of society doesn’t seriously believe we’re cut out for it, or that we’re anything special. It certainly doesn’t care about us.

And so that’s what we secretly believe, deep down: that we’re not special, and that our dreams are just that: dreams.

How much easier to let your dreams remain in the playground of your mind, where no one else can see them but you? Where no one can judge them or so much as raise an eyebrow at them.

So there they stay, floating around in some static form or other until death or some other life-altering event erases them completely. You never shared your dream with the world, you never benefitted from it and no one else benefitted from it.

There are other kinds of fear, too.

The fear of discomfort (writing that terrible first draft). The fear of rejection (“sorry, try again”). The fear of an existential crisis (“I’m nothing special, my ideas are nothing new”).

The fear that, once we get started, we’ll discover we need to go in a different direction than we originally thought.

The fear of change.

The fear of missed opportunities and doors closing (“There are these other things I want to do, too…”).

There are plenty of legitimate reasons we experience both apathy and overwhelm when it comes to trying to make our dreams come true.

And if we really only did have one week left to live, there wouldn’t be a point. It would make more sense to make a last-minute trip with loved ones to a place you’ve always wanted to go and spend your last hours only doing things of immediate importance.

But that scenario only takes into consideration Present You.

Future You, on the other hand, will be anywhere from mildly disappointed to devastated if, in ten, twenty, or fifty years from now, you still haven’t taken steps toward your dream. Because that’s not something that Future You has any control over, and dreams don’t just automatically become reality at some point the way that a cicada, after a decade of sleeping and eating underground, suddenly bursts into the sunlight.

So as hard as it is, as scary as it is at times, commit now to what you really want to do before you die.

And you’ll find that once you get going, momentum kicks in. Yes, there will be hard days – yes, the monsters will come for you – but that’s part of the package. You’ve been called to adventure, and you must answer the call.

Start today by taking just a small step or two. Small steps add up and compound over time, faster than you think. Sit down with your computer, your canvas, or your musical instrument of choice, and shut the door.

It doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you start somewhere.

Don’t let down Future You.

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