Why You Should Give Up On Your Dreams

When Anna* came to me, she was interviewing for jobs after spending the past 18 months writing full-time.

Previously a product manager, some of her early writing had gone viral, and she had decided to quit and throw herself completely into her writing. She had hoped to build an audience, maybe get a book deal, and find a way to make a living doing something she loved… but things didn’t quite pan out that way.

Instead, her early success became a weight so heavy that she barely published any work. With each new piece, she felt like she had to measure up to the standard she had set with her past work or exceed it. She dreaded the thought of putting out something “low quality,” which she feared would lead her audience to turn on her, criticizing the work and leaving her irrelevant.

As a result, her creative output shrank to only a few published pieces in the year and a half she wrote full-time—and the whole process was fraught with stress, procrastination, and anxiety. Even though the writing she put out was well received, she came to hate the process and the craft she’d previously loved.

When we began to work together, what felt to her like a “failure” weighed heavy on her heart. She had decided to get a job back in product to take the pressure off her writing, but she still carried the weight of her unfulfilled dreams. The artistic medium that had once brought her so much joy continued to be a source of stress.

Goal fusion: stuck on dreams

While Anna’s dream was about becoming a writer, her story is not unique. I’ve met numerous founders and creators whose work has suffered under the weight of their aspirations.

In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), we call this “goal fusion.” In lay terms, goal fusion is when we get stuck on a certain dream for our future and become fixated on closing the gap between our dreams and reality. When this happens, we become disconnected from the work we’re doing in the present and may not realize when our dreams are leading us off course.