How to let go of a lifelong dream

Come to terms with your decision

As you let your dream go, you might be agonising over whether you’re making a mistake. ‘There’s no good answer, there’s no formula’ for deciding whether to plough on or give up, says Wrosch. However, he recommends bearing in mind a phenomenon known as ‘goal shielding’ – when we’re highly focused on a particular dream or ambition, we tend to filter out inconvenient information that might imperil the project. ‘Motivational psychologists call it an “implemental mindset”,’ says Wrosch. ‘If you cross the Rubicon, you focus on what you want to achieve, and you don’t have that balance [in how you process the situation] any more.’ For that reason, he says most us are, if anything, probably more at risk of stubbornly pursuing a dream for too long than giving up too early.

The author and entrepreneur Seth Godin agrees with Wrosch – ‘there’s no calculus’ for deciding when to give up, he says. He too warns that most of us ‘lie to ourselves all the time about whether we have the resources to get through the dip’. ‘The dip’ is Godin’s term – taken from his 2007 book of the same name, and subtitled A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) – that he says refers to the ‘difficult space in between the joy of starting and the benefit of getting to the other side’.

One way to think about this emotionally difficult moment is as a chance to be objective about your dream. Was pursuing it coming at great personal cost, in terms of your relationships and other goals in life? If so, that would suggest it was what psychologists call an ‘obsessive passion’ and you’re wise to give it up (as distinct from a ‘harmonious passion’ that fits well into the rest of your life).

Also, try to think, if you can, more like a ‘healthy perfectionist’: recognise that letting go of your goals doesn’t cast some final verdict on you as a person, and acknowledge the influence of circumstances beyond your control. Remember too that success isn’t all or nothing – although you might not have fulfilled your dream in its entirety, you will likely have learned much along the way, and you now have the chance to redirect your energy and passion in new ways. This is also a good time to seek the counsel of close family and friends. They’ll be able to help you view your situation objectively and come to terms with your decision.

Be realistic about what you just gave up

When you decide to let go of a dream, it’s almost inevitable that it’s going to hurt, at least for a time, but there are ways to ease the discomfort and move on. ‘My approach to this is starting with the tragic realism of it, that it’s going to be hard, it’s going to hurt,’ says Amarnani, who likens the experience of giving up a dream to a romantic breakup. ‘To have an ambition is to have this vision of your future self, and to drop that is to drop a piece of you,’ he says.

That parallel with relationships offers an effective clue for how to cope. In the context of romantic relationships, Amarnani says that it can be therapeutic to be realistic, rather than idealistic, about the person you’re breaking from, even to focus deliberately on their flaws. If we’re honest, many of our dreams are romanticised, and it’s worth remembering that what you’re giving up is not that fantasy version of the future. We think of doctors as healing people, says Amarnani, or that staff at the United Nations are building peace, but then their daily reality is often far more mundane – doctors are navigating the bureaucracy of their healthcare system; workers at the UN are pushing paperwork around.

Amarnani speaks partly from personal experience. He once harboured a dream to become a computational cognitive neuroscientist, but he suffered repeated rejections and then the financial crisis hit. He changed gears to become a management scholar – ‘I thought I was selling my soul,’ he says, ‘but really what I was doing was just adjusting to the situation, being adaptable and trusting that, when you try something new, the passion will come.’ To help make peace with his decision, Amarnani focused on the negatives of the field he gave up –‘Decades of research on the brain has taught us next to nothing about the mind’ – and today he couldn’t be happier that he gave up his dream. ‘I grieved, genuinely,’ he says, ‘but life does go on.’

Find a new passion

It’s a cliché to say that one door closing means another opening, but it’s true. By letting go of an impossible dream, you’re freeing yourself to put time and effort into a potentially more rewarding project. It’s tempting to look at a high achiever such as Godin and assume that he arrived at his success via a direct path, propelled by grit and focused ambition. But, like most successful people, Godin has left behind many dreams in his past, including the sale of his company Yoyodyne to Yahoo for about $30 million in the late-1990s. ‘So I didn’t end up running a giant corporation. And that was fine,’ he says. ‘And I used to help run a summer camp up in northern Canada. And it was my dream for a long time. But if I had pursued that dream, I wouldn’t have the stuff I have now.’ Among other things, that includes authoring no fewer than 19 books since 1993, and being inducted into both the Marketing Hall of Fame and the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame.

Godin’s is an extraordinary career, but you too can find ways to redirect your passion and interests in new paths. If you can find something that fulfils the same needs, but which is more feasible, then that’s likely to be ‘a good replacement goal’, says Wrosch. If you dreamed of playing professional football, for instance, you could become a coach (and still play for your local club at the weekends). Garber has taken this approach: she still dances as a hobby – and enjoys it more now that there’s no pressure – and she’s combining her new career path as a journalist with her former dream. ‘This summer, I did a PR internship for a dance company, which was really rewarding, and I’m doing some similar work now,’ she says.

It can be particularly painful to let go of a dream when you’re forced to do so by circumstance, such as for health reasons. But, still, there might be ways to channel your passion. If you dreamed of starting your family, for instance, but haven’t been able to for whatever reason, you might find fulfilment in teaching or childcare. Acceptance and commitment therapy – an offshoot of CBT – teaches us to focus on what we can do in pursuit of our values and interests, rather than lamenting what we’ve lost. Say you dreamed of being a lawyer but health problems preclude such a heavy workload: perhaps your overarching concern to stand up for people could be expressed through community advocacy?

On the other hand, now you’re liberated from one particular dream, you might find it more appealing to use the newfound freedom to strike out in a completely different direction. If that’s the case, take your time and weigh up your options. Godin cautions against rushing. Instead, he talks about the ‘white, blank, empty, open space’ – that’s where ‘your subconscious will cook up the next thing you’re supposed to do,’ he says. ‘So, if you need to invent a new trapeze to hold on to, to get rid of this one, you’re probably not going to invent properly. You’re probably going to do it out of desperation. And I think it makes more sense to say, how do I use this open space to figure out what’s actually worth committing to?’

One practical exercise you could consider is to take a career interests quiz. There are many different versions available, but one of the most respected is the Career Aptitude Test that’s based on the RIASEC theory put forward in the 1950s by the American psychologist John Holland, and which categorises your interests as being predominantly either Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising or Conventional.

Certain careers are considered a better match to the different test categories (see a breakdown here) – for instance, civil engineering falls under Realistic, and clinical psychology under Investigative. Underlying this approach is the basic idea that we’re more likely to excel and find satisfaction in career paths that match our underlying interests. Whether that’s true or not – and there’s a lively scholarly literature debating the evidence – the exercise might help fuel your imagination for what ambitions to pursue next.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/2ITfsyq