How to revive a dead dream.

I was scrolling LinkedIn this morning and came across a few posts where people were announcing their "dream job", new "passion project," or how they're "finally going after what they've always wanted."

I could have sworn I'd seen different dreams from these same people before.

Sure enough, the person who's now "passionate about real estate software" was talking about financial tech just a few years earlier. The entrepreneur who just launched their dream coaching business was posting about their passion for starting a CPG business not long ago.

So what happened to those old dreams? Did they just... disappear?

It got me thinking about how many times I've had a dream that just never materialized.

Turns out, dreams have expiration dates.

Why dreams actually die

Most people think dreams die from neglect. We all get busy, get distracted, and then we forget about them.

I don't think that's what actually happens.

Dreams die from weight. Every day that passes that you don't act on a dream, it gets heavier to carry around. What started as an exciting possibility becomes this thing you "should" be doing. The should-ness kills the want-ness.

I watched this happen to myself. For years, I nagged my wife about living abroad. It started as this light, fun idea. "Wouldn't it be cool to spend a few years living abroad in Europe, checking out how the culture compares to America?"

But after five years of talking about it, it had become this heavy thing I carried around, constantly feeling the evidence of my own inaction. Every time I got into a conversation with someone around travel, I would think about how I was still here, still making excuses, still not doing the thing I said I wanted to do.

My dream hadn't changed, but my relationship to it had. It went from something I wanted to something I was failing at.

The pressure trap

Along with the weight of dreams, there's also the pressure of "doing" the dream well. And the longer you wait to start something, the better it has to be when you finally do it.

If you start a newsletter tomorrow, people expect beginner-level content. But if you start one after talking about it for two years, there's going to be a different level of expectation around it. And not just from the people who might read it, but from yourself.

If you quit your job next month to freelance, everyone understands that there's going to be a ramp-up period. But if you quit after five years of "planning," people will wonder why you aren't hitting your goals in your first month. You included.

This is why so many dreams become impossible to start. The gap between your current skill level and what everyone expects grows wider every month that you wait.

Your dream stops competing solely with your other priorities, and it starts competing with an imaginary perfect version of itself that you've built up.

How to know what's worth saving

This weight problem creates another issue. It becomes difficult to understand what dreams are worth pursuing (regardless of weight), and which aren't.

Many of my dreams have expired because they were never really mine to begin with. They were just things I thought I should want because I saw friends or colleagues achieving them. Or they were dreams that sounded good in theory but felt exhausting when I sat down and thought through the practice of actually achieving them.

Here's how I test this now. When I imagine actually doing the work (not having done it, but really doing it), how does that make me feel?

Sit with your laptop open, ready to write your first newsletter. Does your mind start coming alive with ideas, or do you immediately think about everything else you should be doing instead?

Picture yourself on a sales call explaining your new consulting services to a prospective customer. Does that conversation give you energy, or does the thought make you want to run and hide somewhere?

Imagine spending your Saturday morning working on your passion project instead of heading out to the park with your spouse and kids. Does that feel like heaven or punishment?

If the actual work excites you, then go save that dream. If it feels like a miserable chore you've been avoiding, you might be chasing someone else's outcome without wanting the actual inputs.

The reset

If thinking about the work excites you but the dream feels impossible to start, sometimes the only way to save that dying dream is to kill it first.

Stop talking about the big version. Stop planning for the perfect version. Stop carrying around that heavy, guilt-laden version that you've been "meaning to start."

Instead, get curious about what a much smaller version might look like. Not the big travel blog with 100+ issues, merch, and sponsorships. How about just one post about a place you've been?

Don't imagine the AI consulting business with process, systems, employees, and VAs. Go help one friend automate one part of their business.

That's what I finally did with my living abroad dream. I stopped talking about moving abroad and just spent last winter in Paris for 90 days with my wife and our three dogs. We loved it so much, we're going to live abroad again for three months this year. I finally have some momentum on a dream I spent more than five years nagging my wife about.

The great part about building momentum toward the big dream is that you get to discover whether you actually like the thing underneath all the pressure you've piled on top of it.

Because if you don't like the small version, you definitely won't like the big version. And if you do like it, congratulations. You've just resurrected a dream that was almost dead.

The bottom line

Your dreams have expiration dates, but the cause of death isn't usually neglect. It's suffocation under the weight of your own expectations.

The window of time that's open right now for starting that imperfect newsletter or messy side project is disappearing. Not because you're getting older, but because you're making it harder than it needs to be.

Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do isn't finally starting the big dream. It's letting yourself want something small again.

The small version of my dream brought the big version back to life.

I hope it will do the same for you.

That's all for today.

See you next Saturday.