#86: The Difference Between Quitting and Completing a Dream

I sat down to record this week thinking, honestly, that I had nothing left to say. 

 And instead of pretending otherwise, I decided to talk about that. About what it feels like when a dream goes quiet, and how you tell the difference between a hard week and a finished chapter. 

 We've all picked up the idea that if something is truly your dream, it should feel exciting. It should be easy to want. When it doesn't, we read that as proof we chose wrong. 

 The question is, are you holding onto something you still want or just holding on out of habit? 

We're not landing on a clean answer here. That's not how this works. 

But we are going to talk about what that question actually means, and why the fact that you're still asking it might be the most honest thing you've got right now. 

3 Key Take Aways From This Episode

1️⃣ You can be fully inside your dream and still have days where you'd rather be anywhere else. That's just what it feels like to be in something real. 

2️⃣ There's a difference between quitting and completing, and knowing which one you're actually looking at changes what you do next. 

3️⃣ When someone else's dream looks steady and certain from the outside it is often just them showing up anyway, on the bad days too.

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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.

0:23

Well, hello my friend. Welcome back to the Distracted Dreamer podcast. I am your host, Carlene, and I am so happy to have you here today for this conversation. Uh, first I wanna remind you really quickly that if you haven't done so yet, go sign up for my new newsletter. It's called the Tuesday Letter. And it's totally free, And I share things that are going on in midlife for me, and for you that I don't share here on the podcast. So if you wanna be part of that conversation, go sign up at coachcarleen.com/newsletter, or the link is in the show notes. But make sure you, you grab that, and I'll be showing up in your inbox every Tuesday. Okay. Let's get started with today's episode, and I am gonna tell you something that seems weird to really say here on the podcast, and it's that I have stretches where I sit down to record this podcast, and I think to myself, "Gosh, I have nothing left to say. The well is dry. I'm repeating myself, and some weeks it feels less like a calling and more like an obligation." And I really can't believe I'm sitting here telling you this, but it is those weeks when a question creeps in that I don't love admitting is I ask, "Is it time to hang up the mic? And would anyone even notice if I did?" So back in episode two, I asked a version of this question, "When is a dream finished?" And it was just one small piece of a much bigger episode, and I never really sat in it. So today I wanna do that because I think a lot of you are asking yourself the same question about something in your life, not about a podcast. But maybe it's a business that you've started or it's a hobby that you used to love or maybe it's pertains to a relationship that you're in or a role that you've outgrown, uh, but you haven't admitted it yet to yourself. Something you've been carrying so long that you're not sure anymore if you're holding onto a dream or if it's just kind of a habit. Maybe it's, it's time to stop, because I think underneath that question, there's a whole pile of other questions that we don't have the answers to, and we don't really even ask ourselves. And the questions that come up for me is, you know, well, if I stop the podcast, am I abandoning this dream? Like, did it only matter if I kept doing it forever? Like, has it already served its purpose? Or am I just too afraid to admit that it's enough? Or what about if I walk away, am I failing at this? Or does it mean something bigger about who I said I'd be if I did this? And then I think the other side shows up, too. Like, if I keep going when some part of me wants to stop, will I end up feeling resentful? Will this thing that I once loved turn into an obligation I'm just pushing through? And you know what? These questions, they rarely show up about small things. They show up about the things that actually matter, right? It's not like we interrogate ourselves about going to the grocery store on a Thursday, but you do interrogate yourself about the dream, and when that happens, it means that the very fact that you're asking these questions is proof of how much this still means to you And if asking the question is proof that you still care, then a harder question surfaces, and that is, how do you actually tell the difference between a dream that's finished and a dream that's just having a hard week, and that's what we're talking about today. A few weeks ago, when I was feeling very uninspired and questioning everything, I got a text from one of our listeners, Joanne, And she said, quote, "You put into words something I couldn't, but I feel so deeply. This is what it feels like to be seen. Thank you for that." And you know what? I sat with my phone in my hand and I thought, 'Okay, I have to keep going. This matters. You matter.' And I wanna be careful with how I use that story, because it would be easy to turn it into a tidy little fix. Oh, a text saved the podcast, the end. But that's not actually what I want you to take from this. That text didn't answer the question of whether this dream is finished. It just reminded me why I started, and those are two different things, and the difference matters more than it sounds like it should. Here's the distinction I keep coming back to. Quitting is walking away from something that's still alive in you, usually out of fear or boredom or a hard season, and letting that one bad stretch decide things that it doesn't get to decide. Completing a dream is different. Completing is recognizing that a dream has done what it came to do. It served its purpose. You grew what you were meant to grow. Continuing to chase it isn't devotion anymore, it's just inertia. And both are real, and both happen, and the hardest part is that from the inside, in the middle of a hard week, those things can feel exactly the same. So a creative block, it doesn't get a vote on whether a dream is finished. Boredom with the process doesn't get a vote either. Being tired, genuinely, legitimately tired of how much creating something takes out of you, it doesn't get a vote either. Those are conditions. They're not decisions. So if a creative block or boredom or being tired doesn't get a vote, what does that mean for you day to day? Well, I think it means talking about something that I think gets misunderstood constantly. This is what I think is the most misunderstood thing about dreams, is they're not always dreamy when you're actually living them. Dreams are not always dreamy when you're living them. Somewhere along the way, we picked up this idea that if something is truly your dream, it should feel exciting all of the time. It should be energizing. It should be easy to want. And when it doesn't, when it feels flat or heavy or like one more thing, we read that as evidence that we picked the wrong dream But a dream is a living thing, and as we know, living things have range. Your energy for it will rise, and it will fall. You'll have days you're counting down the minutes until you get to work on it, and days you'd rather do almost anything else. And that swing, it isn't a red flag. It's just what it feels like to be in relationship with something that's real, that matters over time. So let me show you what I mean. Let's say your dream is to travel more. A good day in that dream looks like you looking at a map and going down that rabbit hole of flights to Portugal and feeling that little spark of, can you believe we could actually do this? Right? All that excitement. And then a bad day about traveling to Portugal, it looks like staring at the same flight search, and you're just tired trying to figure out everybody's schedules, like how am I gonna coordinate all of this, and all the people, and all the packing, and the logistics. It's the same dream, it's just a completely different day. Let's say that your dream is to finally write the book that you've been carrying around for years. A good day is when the words show up and an hour disappears without you noticing. A bad day is staring at the blinking cursor, convinced you have nothing worth saying, wondering why you ever thought you had a book in you. Same dream, same person, it's just a different day living inside of it. Or let's say that your dream is to put together an art show with a friend, the one you keep talking about but haven't actually scheduled. A good day is the two of you texting back and forth, picking the pieces, imagining the room full of people. A bad day in that dream is wondering if anyone would even show up, if your work is even good enough, if you're being ridiculous for even thinking about it. So you see, none of those bad days mean you picked the wrong dream. They just mean you're having a bad day inside of a real dream. And you know what happens? So many women walk away from a dream that was actually right for them simply because they hit a bad day and never stuck around to see what the next good day felt like. And I think for those of us in midlife, that swing, it feels more dramatic than it used to because you're already managing so much change at once. Your body, your role at home is changing, your sense of who you even are outside of being needed by everyone else. Your energy was always going to ebb and flow some, but in this season, it peaks and it dips more often, and it's so unpredictable, more so than it ever used to be. And you wake up at 3:00 in the morning with your thoughts circling, and by the time the sun comes up, you're not sure what you actually believe about your own life. Should I keep going? Should I let this go? You don't trust either answer because you're in a season where everything got reshuffled. So you don't have to decide today. Let it simmer. Don't force the question to resolve itself at 3:00 a.m., in the dark, in the worst possible conditions for clear thinking. I promise, your energy will be different tomorrow. Your outlook will be different in some way. Your motivation is going to shift the way it always does, and that is not proof that you can't trust yourself. That's just what the season does to everyone living through it. And so maybe now you're thinking, "Well, gosh, where does that leave me here with the podcast and the question that I opened with?" And my honest answer is, I'm just in process. This isn't a decision I made once and now it's settled forever. It's more like a dance with my own heart, and some weeks I'm in it, and some weeks I feel like I'm not in it, and I'm figuring it out a little differently every time I ask that question. So today, I'm in. I'm all in. I'm here with you. I'm recording this, and if I hadn't told you about being in a funk and the hard weeks and the 3:00 AM doubt, you would've never known any of that was happening underneath the episodes that you've been listening to. I think that's true of a lot of dreams. From the outside, they look steady, they look glamorous, and from the inside, they have good days and bad days. That's the reality, just like anything else that you love. If you're standing in the middle of that question right now about something in your own life, I'm not gonna hand you a five-step framework for whether it's finished. I don't think one exists. What I can offer you is this: a bad week is not the same as a finished dream. Let it simmer before you decide anything, and pay attention to what still pulls at you, even on the days that it doesn't feel dreamy at all All right, my friend. That's where I am today, and I just wanted to be honest with you about that. And if something in this episode is sitting with you, please text me. I wanna know what's happening for you. The link is in the show notes. And if you know someone who is circling the same question about whether the dream is finished or not, send this episode to her. She might need to know she's not the only one asking that question. And you know what? I will see you back here next week to welcome you into our next conversation the minute that you hit play. Bye for now

Carlene 13:29

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.