Don’t Let a Failure To Dream Hold You Back
“Follow your dreams” is a pretty superficial and unhelpful piece of advice. It’s what I call “bumper sticker philosophy.” It sounds great and people may even clap when you say it (it’s the most common piece of advice in commencement addresses), but it’s missing the needed nuance and structure to make it effective.
Ideal State
That said, don’t let a failure to dream hold you back. Dreaming is powerful and your dreams are important, but there are many more useful phrases than “Follow your dream” when mapping the course of your life. “Dream” carries a passive tone, so telling someone to follow their dream fails to be constructive or effective advice. It’s not actionable.. Perhaps we should replace “Follow your dream” with “Work toward your Ideal State.” Working toward an Ideal State is a term popularized by Robert Fritz, and later Peter Senge, and further promoted by yours truly. It helps us focus on the gap between our current state and an ideal state, which, in turn, helps us carve a path toward closing that gap.
True North
“Find your True North” is another popular piece of career advice. True North is a theoretical point, but it’s also a very real mechanism that helped guide navigation for millennia before GPS and Google Maps. Knowing true north helps us navigate our next steps, even if we are far from that point. Although conceptually, True North is meant to be fixed, I think it’s more compelling that the actual magnetic north has shifted over time just as your vision of where you are headed should evolve along the way.
Perfection
Perfection can be an inhibitor when it applies to things like organizing your sock drawer, but the pursuit of perfection in your core efforts is very useful. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Vince Lombardi, legendary American football coach. He declared “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” And that’s the goal – excellence.
Whichever terminology you prefer, there are practical reasons why this thinking is helpful. First, it helps you avoid filling your time and space with things that aren’t helping you get to your “destination.” I’ve been working toward carving my work down, like a sculptor chiseling stone to the most essential, enjoyable, and impactful work with my ACT with Purpose clients. Each time I consider my ideal state, I end up chiseling away other activities that are in the way, or at least, not adding to that pursuit.
Second, it helps shape your next steps. Instead of a random walk of experimentation or trend-following, we can evaluate our next steps against that pursuit of excellence. This could be the next job you take, the next educational experience you pursue, or even the next book you read.
Finally, to the coach’s point, you get further when you are pursuing something truly great. The pursuit itself is worth it and is its own fulfillment. To return to bumper sticker wisdom, another common commencement speech phrase is, “It’s the journey, not the destination.” This is true, but only when we’re pursuing our ideal state – we may not achieve it, but the journey will be more fulfilling and the destination we do reach will be more rewarding.
So, follow your dreams, but do it actively and thoughtfully.