Rule #8: Do not polish your dreams

For an interesting life you will have to make sacrifices

I’ve published nine books so far. It’s been a dream career and I’m grateful for it. What is surprising to people is to achieve this I’ve mothballed more than a dozen book projects in various states of completion. Ratios like this are common for creative people. Experimentation is required to learn how an idea actually turn out. This has always been true. It’s the work of being an artist. Even the legends had their scrap piles of works that did not work out.

Ideas are often the easy part. It can take just a few seconds to come up with a good idea, or even a great one. But no matter how good the idea is, the hard part is figuring out the countless details to make the idea into an actual thing. Ideas come in moments, but it may be hundreds of hours of effort before you know if it the idea actually works. There is just no escape from the effort and the risk. That’s why there are more people with ideas than those who have published novels, produced movies, started businesses or just about anything interesting in life.

Polishing a dream means you regularly spend time imagining a future where your dream is a real thing. It could be a trip of a lifetime, a career change, a romantic relationship or a creative achievement like writing a book. Some polishing is inevitable. Even I do it sometimes. But the danger is when you confuse polishing a dream with chasing one.

Chasing a dream means you are putting in effort to make the dream real. Even if you never achieve it, you will have acted with purpose in your life. You will have made sacrifices for something you believe in. It’s the making of sacrifices that leads to self-respect and self-love. It means you are willing to give up something scarce (time, money, reputation) to try and achieve something important to you (freedom, expression, self-actualization).

Chasing a dream gives you self knowledge. You learn more about what you are capable of, or not. No matter the outcome your sense of yourself grows. Self-discovery is priceless. You will get better at choosing, and chasing, your next dream. Perhaps you’ll arrive at the dream of helping other people live theirs. Or even discover the meta-dream of not needing to polish or chase dreams to feel content with your life.

But someone who primarily polishes dreams learns nothing. Why? Polishing a dream is repetitive. It’s the same pleasing fantasy over and over again. It imagines everything going right, with no sacrifices, but also no lessons. And no discoveries. For people who chase dreams, the dreams change as they learn more about themselves. Midway through they can change directions or tactics, because they are growing. But polishing a dream has no direction and no tactics. It’s a kind of escape.

There is no doubt that escapes are important. It’s a gift to have minds that let us escape our present situation whenever we need to. And polishing a dream is the cheapest, fastest and possibly most effective kind of escape, when compared to destructive addictions like drugs, video games or gambling. I am very much in favor of dreams and safe escapes, provided they are in service to the kind of life you want to have.

Which brings us to the central question of this rule: do you want a life of polishing dreams or of achieving them? The best way to start achieving a dream is to sacrifice something for it. You can’t chase a dream for free. It will cost something. And it’s a price you will be willing to pay if you want an interesting life.

Waiting for my real life to begin, by Colin Hay

Any minute now, my ship is coming in
I'll keep checking the horizon
And I'll stand on the bow, and feel the waves come crashing
Come crashing down, down, down on me

And you say, be still my love
Open up your heart, let the light shine in
But don't you understand
I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin

When I awoke today, suddenly nothing happened
But in my dreams, I slew the dragon
And down this beaten path, up this cobbled lane
I'm walking in my old footsteps, once again

And you say, just be here now
Forget about the past, your mask is wearing thin
Just let me throw one more dice
I know that I can win
I'm waiting for my real life to begin