self improvement

If Your Dreams Don’t Scare the Sh*t Out of You, Are They Worth Pursuing?

Your cue to set unreasonable goals this year.

Anangsha Alammyan

13 Feb 2024 • 4 min read

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Your cue to set unreasonable goals this year.

Goals. Dreams. Life’s purpose.

These are such big words, aren’t they? Each one of us have different ways of looking at them.

All my life, I thought my goal was to have a stable job that paid me well, a happy family, and a home to call my own.

In 2020, I had all of that, but my heart was unfulfilled.

My job was great, but it didn’t let me use my creativity. The family I had an option of starting was all anyone could ever ask for, but I felt it would tie me down. The home I lived in was beautiful, but it was in a small town with barely any facilities, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the best years of my life stuck in a corner of the world no one ever came to.

And that’s why, I quit it all.

I gave up the warmth of comfort and embraced uncertainty.

I committed to this life of being a full-time writer with no strings to tie me down. It’s been three years since I started this new chapter, and so far, things have been awesome.

This career switch was the scariest decision I made in my life of 30 years. If I learned anything from it, it’s this: Once you achieve your goal, life doesn’t feel worth living anymore.

We outgrow our dreams. That’s what makes us human.

And that’s the reason why we need to have bigger, scarier, more audacious goals.

Not convinced? Read on.

I was reading the book Unfu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop, when I came across a quote that made me think:

“If you want to win, you have to be willing to be judged by others and not let it get to you. If you want to do something truly great, you’ll have to accept that some people are going to think you’re delusional or an idiot or righteous.”

This reminded me of a conversation I had a few days ago with a friend.

“What do you want to do?” I asked her, when she confided in me that she’s considering quitting her job.

“I want to take up pole dancing full-time,” she told me. “It’s such a misunderstood art from in India, I want to create content around it that breaks the taboo. And don’t laugh, but there’s something else.”

“What?” I asked.

“I want to host workshops, and maybe one day open India’s biggest pole dance studio. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I want to do it.”

And that’s the point of this article. If you don’t think others will perceive your goals as “ridiculous” or “impossible,” are they even goals worth pursuing?

As humans, we’re incapable of seeing the bigger picture. When asked to dream big, we still dream of something that encompasses the next 2–3 years.

But what if we let go of that?

Instead of dreaming about and planning for the immediate future, what if we zoomed out and tried to imagine what the next few decades should look like for us?

I know it’s hard. Even now, I can hear your response, “2 years ago, this life would have been unimaginable. The future’s so unpredictable.”

The future is unpredictable, I agree, but our goals can act as our tether to reality.

If we have a mental picture we’re willing to work towards, the journey gets easier.

And that mental picture is comprised of your goals.

What if you stopped dreaming small, and started dreaming of doing something that’s not just the best in the country, but the best in the world?

After all, it’s just a dream right. No harm in making it big.

And if you do, maybe one day, your reality will catch up.

I know it will. I’m rooting for you.

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