The case for abandoning your dreams

At some point down the path toward our "dreams" we are faced with a critical question: do we pivot, or do we persevere?

You know the feeling. It's not going too well, you're facing new obstacles, maybe you've learned some new things about this "dream" path that have dulled its initial luster. Maybe money doesn't matter to you as much as you once thought. Maybe it matters more. Maybe the peers, colleagues, or coworkers in this dream space aren't the people you'd imagined they'd be.

Maybe you just don't have the skills. (Sure I'm pushing 39, but someday I'll get my chance to be an MLB player). So ... do you abandon the dream?

Stepping back, this dreaded question, and its sweeping implications, lurks just behind every challenge we face. The real question, in fact, is whether we acknowledge it or ignore it.

For startups, Eric Ries says to have routine, scheduled pivot or persevere discussions so as to avoid allowing problems to fester while we procrastinate, further compounding the damage the problem continues to inflict while unattended.

Startups are a good proxy for this discussion, as they have only one singular dream: don't fail. But what does it mean to fail? Well, it depends on how do you defined the dream in the first place.

If your dream is to learn and make better choices, the decision to pivot is never the decision to give up. It's the decision to retain control. Because an irrational commitment to a dead-end path is the very definition of out of control.

Let's be honest: no one wants to pivot. Pivot means to give up! The world full of stories of people who persevere and eventually succeed, and those are the best stories! You know why? Because they're RARE.

Like having a video go viral or winning the lottery, success through perseverance isn't always on merit. It may just be a random, "right place at the right time" situation, and it vindicates the potentially reckless decisions left in the wake; decisions that 9/10 times would have led to catastrophe if duplicated.

The choice to pivot is the difficult one. Every bone in your body tells you to keep fighting, even through multiple rounds of failures. But what's that Internet definition of insanity? Doing the same thing and expecting different results? Yep.

When you choose to pivot, you take control. Learn what you're going to learn, and know when to take a new path. Success is never a straight line. If you go into it accepting this reality, then it becomes a matter of when, not if, your path is going to shift. And if this is part of the plan all along, you keep the sense of destiny control some fear is lost when they "give up on their dreams."

No, if your dream is to learn more and make better choices, the decision to pivot is never the decision to give up. It's the decision to retain control. Because an irrational commitment to a dead-end path is the very definition of out of control.

So there it is. Maybe your dream doesn't need to be abandoned, just redefined. As with everything in life, the destination rarely matters. It's the process by which you get there. And the sooner you learn to love the process over its results, the sooner you'll find yourself immersed in a dream that cannot be abandoned.