Stop Hiding From Your Dreams

We all hate the thought of failure, and we sure don’t want to think about it.

We’re told that we need always to be positive: positive affirmations, positive thinking, positive self-talk, etc.

But there is a problem with this.

You can’t avoid failure and be honest about what you want.

As soon as you define what you truly want, you also define your condition for failure since every clear goal has a possibility of not working out.

So how do people deal with this?

By being wishy-washy about their goals.

It’s easier to make your desires vague; this way, you can avoid the harsh reality of determining what failure looks like.

Wishy-washy goals may protect you from failure, but they will also deprive you of getting what you want. You need to have the courage to be honest with yourself about what you want, even though this means comprehending failure.

Thinking about failing goes against much self-help advice, which advocates never considering it an option. But failure is more damaging when left ambiguous.

Put it out in the open, and imagine dealing with it. You’ll see that it may not be as bad as you guessed, certainly not as bad as never knowing what could have been if you were honest with yourself about your desire.

Don’t Settle for “Okay”

One thing I’ve noticed about many people who became successful is that they started from an intolerable place.

As uncomfortable as it is, there is an advantage to intolerable: it’s obvious. These people had to become supreme badasses — there was no other option.

Someone in an intolerable situation can’t fool themselves about the fact that they need to make a change. A lukewarm situation is more dangerous because it is deceiving. It’s easy to procrastinate on making a change when your situation is comfortable.

The entrepreneur Derek Sivers has an ethos he applies to his life called “Hell Yes, or No.” You can use Hell Yes Or No to be honest about the parts of your life that you know you could improve but continue to tolerate.

Hell yes or no is about rejecting “meh” experiences. You’re either all in, or it’s a no.

Apply this to your career, your relationships, what you do with your free time, and what you consume. You have responsibilities and probably are not in a situation where you can immediately remove everything in your life that is not a Hell Yes. But evaluating aspects of your life through this lens can be insightful.

The curse of modernity is that it is so ridiculously easy to have it “pretty good” and get distracted by the immediate comfort of cheap dopamine.

Comfort is a breeding ground of mediocrity. How can you break out of this?

Raise your standards

No more “meh” allowed; it’s hell yes or no!

Set a bold vision for what you want

A hell yes kind of vision. Yeah — when you do this, you will define failure as well, but that’s the point.

Embrace Failure

Don’t let failure be the monster under the bed. Shine a light on it. Journal about what failing would look like, why it might happen, and what it would mean for you. You can remove its power over you by focusing on it.

You may realize that if you do fail, it may not even be as bad as you think. Then your process will take on a “screw it, let’s have fun with this” vibe rather than frantic desperation destined for burnout.

Put them right out there in the open. Buy a whiteboard, put it in your kitchen, and write your dreams on it in PERMANENT MARKER. That’s the kind of badass move someone who is not hiding from their dreams pulls.