Founder of Product Hunt, Ryan Hoover, shared a passage from the book ‘The Courage to be Disliked’, and it struck a chord.
“I have a young friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, but he never seems to be able to complete his work. According to him, his job keeps him too busy and he can never find enough time to write novels, and that’s why he can’t complete his work and enter it for writing awards. But is that the real reason? No! It’s actually that he wants to leave the possibility of “I can do it if I try” open, by not committing to anything. He doesn’t want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn’t want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection. He want to live inside that realm of possibilities, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it. In another five or ten years, he will probably start using other excuses like “I’m not young anymore” or “I’ve got a family to think about now.”
It got me thinking: What dreams do I really want to pursue? Where am I choosing to “live inside a realm of possibilities”? And what am I going to do about it if I encounter an answer I don’t like?