There is one question that comes up often in personal development, and it’s one I’ve always found difficult to answer.
What are your dreams?
You would think that would be an easy question to answer, but when I sat down to journal about it recently, I realized I didn’t have a clear answer. Not because my life lacks meaning or direction, but because the type of dreams I used to have no longer seem to fit.
For most of my life, I was very good at answering a different question: What needs to be done? I knew how to be responsible, how to build a career, how to achieve the next milestone, how to support the people around me, and how to meet expectations. I became someone others could rely on.
Those were the dreams I understood because they were clear and measurable. They made sense in a world that values achievement and productivity.
But when you organize your life around responsibility for long enough, something subtle begins to happen. You become very practiced at responding to what is needed from you, and less practiced at noticing what you genuinely want.
When I finally asked myself, “What do I want?” the answer was surprisingly quiet.
At first, I wondered if something was wrong. It felt strange not to have a bold or obvious dream waiting for me. But the more time I spent reflecting, the more I began to understand something important.
Maybe the dreams did not disappear. Maybe they simply changed form.
Earlier in life, dreams often revolve around achievement. They look like building something impressive, reaching a milestone, or proving something to yourself or others. Later in life, dreams often begin to shift toward something less measurable but more meaningful.
They become less about what we accomplish and more about what we experience. They also become about what we create for others.
Instead of asking, “What do I want to achieve next?” I started asking different questions. I began asking myself when I feel most alive, what environments make me feel most like myself, and what kinds of conversations I wish existed more often in the world.
One question, in particular, changed the way I thought about dreams.
If someone encounters me, or something I create, what experience do I want them to walk away with?
When I sat with that question, the answers were simple. I want people to feel seen and heard. I want them to feel grounded and to reconnect with themselves. I want them to feel like they can finally exhale.
And in that moment, something became clear to me.
Maybe dreams are not always destinations we reach. Sometimes dreams are the spaces we create.
They are the environments where people can slow down and breathe. They are the conversations that help someone realize they are not alone. They are the moments when someone reconnects with a part of themselves they thought they had lost.
When I looked at my life through that lens, I realized that some of my dreams might already exist in subtle ways.
They exist in quiet conversations that I have around a dinner table, in the pasture with the horses and in the spaces where people come together and remember who they are.
So if someone asked me today, “What are your dreams?” my answer would probably sound different than it did years ago.
It would not be a title or a milestone.
My dream is to create places where people come back to themselves.
If you are in a season where you are asking yourself the same question, you are not alone. Sometimes the answer is not a dramatic vision of the future. Sometimes it begins with a quieter reflection about how you want life to feel and what kind of experience you want to create for others.
If you want to explore this for yourself, here are three questions I have been journaling on lately.
When do I feel most alive?
What environments make me feel most like myself?
What do I wish existed more in the world?
The intersection of those questions can reveal more than you might expect.
Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash