#39: ‘Hard’ Is Part of the Dream: 6 Mindsets to Keep Going Anyway

I know what it’s like for the dream to feel so much harder than you imagined. I’ve been there—facing fear, self-doubt, unexpected curveballs, and the deep exhaustion that comes from caring so much. Because the hard parts make you want to throw in the towel, question everything, and wonder if maybe you were wrong for wanting it in the first place. That’s exactly why I wanted to have this conversation with you.

Today, I’m opening up about the behind-the-scenes moments of my own dreams and the six mindsets that helped me keep going—without quitting on myself or my dreams.

If your dream feels heavier than you thought, I know this episode will give you the mindset tools to get through to the other side.  

HERE ARE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

1️⃣ Hard doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong—it means you’re in it.

2️⃣ Fear is often a sign that you care deeply.

3️⃣ Joy can live right next to struggle.

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Transcript

Speaker 3 0:01

You're never too busy, too tired, too old, or too anything to pursue your dreams. Welcome to the Distracted Dreamer Podcast, where you'll learn how to move all those never ending distractions aside and chase your dreams with confidence.

0:18

Well, hello my friend. I'm your host Carlene, and I can't wait for you to hear today's episode. But before we dive in, I wanna welcome you back to the Distracted Dreamer Podcast. And if this is your very first time tuning in, I am so excited that you are here. So welcome to the Distracted Dreamer family. Today we're having a real heart to heart about one teeny tiny part of chasing our dreams that no one really talks about the hard parts. You know, the ones, the moments that make you question if it's even worth it. The unexpected struggles that pop up when you're doing something new or brave or meaningful. In this episode, we're gonna talk about how to embrace the hard as part of the dream and how to move through it with courage and grace, and maybe even a little bit of fun. So I'm getting vulnerable with you today, and I'm sharing some of the hard parts from my own dreams. Whether it was starting this podcast or building a business or taking the big family vacation, or making a huge move, or healing from illness, each dream. Looked beautiful from a distance, but when I started walking toward it, whew. Things got real. I'm talking about time, money, fear, discomfort, the awkwardness, the exhaustion. Let's face it, there is always a cost to our dreams, but what I've learned through a lot of trial and error. A lot of tears and a lot of laughter is that the hard doesn't mean it's the wrong dream. It just means you're alive and you're living it. Because here's the truth, it doesn't matter what the dream is. These six mindsets that I'm gonna share with you have helped me walk through the hard parts without quitting on the things that matter most to me, and I know they can help you get through the hard too. So let's dive in. The first mindset is do it bigger. Bigger than your fear. When I first got the idea to start this podcast, I froze and not just, oh, I'll do it later. Kind of freeze. I mean like a real full body shut down. Every dreamer has their what if fears and mine showed up loud and clear. What if I sound ridiculous? What if no one listens? What if I start and then realize I'm not good at it? And also, what if I actually am good at it? Then what? Then I really have to keep showing up. I never edited audio before. I am not a public speaker, and if I'm being honest, the idea of people hearing my voice and my real thoughts out loud. It felt terrifying, but deep down, I also knew something else. I knew I wanted to connect with you and so many others out there. I wanted to speak to the distracted dreamers like me, to the people who were juggling all the things and still holding tight to those someday dreams, and I couldn't do that if I let fear stay in charge. So I had to make a decision, and my decision was I was going to do it bigger, bigger than my fear. I didn't have to be polished. I didn't have to be perfect, but I did have to be brave. Okay. And I'll be honest, those early episodes I overthought every single word. I rerecorded intros more times than I'll ever admit. I worried about background noise and awkward pauses and whether my voice sounded weird, but I kept going and that's what mattered. So if you're sitting on a dream right now, maybe it's starting a podcast too, or posting your art or applying for that job, or launching the thing you've been quietly sketching in your notebook, ask yourself, what if you did it a little bigger than your fear? Not perfectly, just bigger. What if you stretched, even if it was uncomfortable? What if you let yourself be seen, even just a little, and you don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to go big enough to begin. So when the dream feels hard, ask yourself, can I go just a little bit bigger than my fear? All right, let's move on to the next mindset, which is to bring the fun. Let me tell you something. I learned how important it's to bring the fun in one of the most not fun places. I know we think of dreams as vacations and making money or creating art, but for a lot of us, the dream is to heal. So for anyone going through any kind of illness, cancer, or otherwise, you have a dream you never thought about before. The dream to heal, and that became my dream when I found out I had breast cancer. I know cancer, not fun, but let me back up here. When I was going through radiation treatment, so many kind people offered to drive me and I appreciated it. I really, really did, but I didn't take anyone up on it, and it wasn't that I didn't want help. It was that I wanted to feel normal and I was still capable of driving myself and doing that. Having that one piece of control, it was grounding for me. Like the treatments, they weren't the hard part. Honestly, the stress was the mental and emotional weight of it all. So I thought, if I'm gonna do this every day, I'm gonna bring just a little bit of joy with me. And I did. I made a playlist, a really good one. Like really good. Think eighties pop anthems that I grew up with, like Springsteen and Journey, and Prince and Jimmy Buffett and Phil Collins. A few nostalgic throwbacks, too many to mention here. And then of course, all my country favorites from today and every single day on my way to treatment and on my way home, I would blast it in the car windows down, volume, up, singing at the top of my lungs. Yeah, I became that person that you see at a stoplight, full on car dancing, banging the dashboard, completely unbothered. I didn't care who was watching, and you know what? I needed to be that person. Because sitting quietly in the car with all of my heavy thoughts, that was not gonna work. I needed some good energy, playful energy, something that reminded me I was still me. Not just a patient, not just a diagnosis. And that playlist, it got me through. So here's the mindset. If it's feeling heavy, bring the fun not to ignore the seriousness, but to balance it, to remind yourself that joy can live right next to fear and that lightness, it can show up even in those really dark moments. Fun doesn't mean you're not taking things seriously. You have to remember that it just means. That you're still alive in it. You can still feel like yourself. You can still have joy even when it's hard. So bringing the fun, it didn't make the hard go away, but it made it bearable for me. Sometimes joy is the thing that keeps us going when things get really tough. If your dream is weighing heavy, bring a little fun back into it. It's not just, okay, it's really actually essential. Okay. The third mindset to help you stay grounded when you lose sight of the bigger picture is to start with the end. Now, if you've been around here for a while, you probably know this about me already. I've always wanted to write a book. I know I sound like a broken record, but you'll be happy to know I'm finally doing it. I'm in the thick of it right now, writing, dreaming, rustling with all the words, and it feels real. And for so many years, people would say to me, you should really write a book. And deep down, I wanted to so badly, but I kept getting stuck. Stuck in the logistics. How do I edit, how do I publish, how do I market it? And I got so caught up in the how that I froze on the why. But here's what helped me keep going. What is helping me right now as I write is I start with the end and no, not end. As in being a New York Times bestselling author, though I'm not gonna lie, calling myself a published author. That lights me up, but that's not the real end that I'm aiming for. The end I care about is this, that someone out there, someone I may never even meet. They read something out of my book and they feel just a little less alone. That's something I share helps them try again, that they hear a story that echoes their own story and for the first time in a long time, they feel seen. That's what I'm writing toward, not sales, not perfection, just connection. The editing and the publishing and the marketing. I'll deal with that when I get there. But when the self-doubt creeps in, when I wanna quit or rewrite the same paragraph 10 times, I come back to the end because starting with the end, it helps you get through the hard middle because if you know how you want to feel when it's over or what you want someone else to feel, you'll keep going. When the dream gets really foggy and really hard. Okay, let's move into a mindset for the moments when life throws you every curve ball possible. We've all been there. So mindset number four is things will go wrong and you'll be fine. This mindset, it hits close to home. A year and a half ago, we moved to Tennessee. But let me back up, because this was not an overnight decision. We looked at moving for five long years. We watched other friends and family make similar moves. Some of'em even moved to Tennessee too. But for us, the timing. Just always off my husband's job. My parents, especially my mom, who was my dad's full-time caregiver, well he lived with Alzheimer's. I couldn't bring myself to leave, and that was okay, but eventually something shifted and we were ready. We started construction, which honestly was the easy part. I know. Surprise. Right? But then came the actual hard part, selling our home of 28 years. You know what happens when you don't move for 28 years? Yeah. You got a lot of stuff. So you stress of cleaning out everything, the decisions, the overwhelm, and then there's all the inspections and the negotiations and all the timelines that don't align and. Just the emotional toll, right? 28 years is not just clutter, it's memories. This was the house that we raised our girls in, it was hard, and like clockwork things went wrong. But here's what I learned. Things will go wrong and you will be fine. We are totally fine. When things go hard, it doesn't mean it's not your dream, it just means that you're in the thick of it. You're in the messy middle, the real part. If you're in the weeds of something right now, something you wanted but now feels like a lot, I want you to just take a deep breath. And just hear me. You're not doing it wrong. You're just doing it. Let things go wrong. Let it be bumpy and trust yourself, you'll get through it because you've gotten through hard things before. Remember, going through the mess doesn't mean the dream is wrong. It just means the dream is real. So things are breaking down, falling through the cracks, or not going according to plan. Hang in there. You got this because this is what hard looks like and you're doing just fine. Okay? Let's talk about what happens when caring deeply about something actually makes you freeze. So mindset five is fear means you care. Now, when I first started coaching, I was nervous, really nervous. Not just nervous about whether I could do a good job, but whether I could truly make a difference. And even more than that, what if I said the wrong thing? What if I unintentionally made something worse for someone? But here's the truth. I cared so much. All I wanted was to help girls, especially girls with A DHD, who had slipped through the cracks like my daughter once did. Girls who were smart and sensitive and capable, but who had spent too much time feeling broken or bad or wrong, I wanted them to know they were strong, that their brains weren't broken. That being different didn't mean they had to hide. Or struggle forever or worse yet, feeling like they didn't fit in. And I wanted their parents, to understand that too, that it's not about punishing under performance. That their daughters weren't lazy or defiant, and that compassion was more powerful than correction. But because I cared that much, the fear crept in. But what if I mess up? What if I don't have what it takes? And that's the trap of caring. It makes you want to be perfect because now it's not just about you, you're carrying other people's hopes too, but here's the mindset shift I had to come back to again and again. Fear doesn't mean that you're failing. Fear means you care. The heart is showing up with your heart on the line, but it's also the reason that your dream matters. And finally, let's talk about the mindset that will carry you up the biggest mountains, literally. Okay. Here's mindset number six is do it because you think you can't. So one of my most favorite family vacations that we took was a trip to Maine in 2022. It started out as just a regular vacation, but then it turned into something really unforgettable. My daughter's boyfriend proposed during a planned family photo shoot. Yes, I was in on it and it was beautiful and emotional and magical, but for me, the moment I'll never forget was the mountain. We went hiking in Acadia National Park and my future son-in-law loves hiking and our three girls. They were basically like racing to the summit with him. Meanwhile, my husband and I looked at each other like, oh boy, I think we're gonna have to do this at our own pace. And still there was a part of me that thought, I don't want them to remember this trip and say Mom couldn't do it. But honestly, I really didn't think that I could. The trail, it was really steep. It was winding. You know, there were tree roots all over the place. So many places that, that I could fall and hurt myself and I don't like heights either. So there's that. But then I got determined, like relentless and I said to myself, I'm gonna do this even if I don't think that I can. So one slow, steady step at a time. Not fast, it wasn't flashy, but we were moving forward and we made it to the top together. My husband and I, I climbed my mountain literally. In the view, the view after doing something you didn't think you could do. Oh, it is absolutely stunning. So if something feels impossibly hard right now, that might be the exact thing you need to prove to yourself that you're stronger than you think you are. So my sweet friend, let's wrap this up because if your dream is feeling heavy right now, just take a deep breath. You are going to get through it. You're not broken and you're not behind, and you're not doing it wrong. You're just in the messy middle of something that matters to you. The hard is part of the dream. Take these six mindsets with you. Here they are again. Go bigger than your fear. Number two, bring the fun. Number three, start with the end. Number four, let things go wrong. You're gonna be okay. Number five, fear means you care. And number six, do it especially because you think that you can't. Because you know what? You've already done so many hard things and you're still here, and you're still dreaming, and you're still becoming, and if this episode spoke to you, share it with someone that you care about who's in that hard place, and the next time it feels hard, do it anyway.

Carlene 17:54

Alright, my sweet friend Thank you so much for being here with me today. And remember your dreams. They are waiting for you and your time. It's now and I'll be back next week. Ready to welcome you to our next conversation. Oh, and one more thing. This is the legal language. You know, the stuff that the lawyers put together, and they say that I need to read this to you. So here we go. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I'm not a licensed therapist. This podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professionals. Got it? Good. I will see you in the next episode.