Do You Still Dream?

Do you still dream?

Sit with that one for a second before you answer.

Most successful leaders don't say no.

They go quiet.

And then something like: I don't know when I stopped.

Dreams Are Not Goals

This is where the question gets uncomfortable, so let me be precise about it.

You have goals. Plenty of them.

They're on your calendar. They're tied to a fiscal year. They have owners and deadlines and someone downstream who is counting on them. You are, by every available measure, very good at achieving them.

That's not what I'm asking about.

Dreams are the things you wanted before anyone was counting on you.

They didn't have a deliverable attached. They didn't need to be defensible in a budget meeting. Nobody was going to be disappointed if they didn't happen, because nobody else knew about them.

They were just yours.

You knew how to do this once. Effortlessly.

Goals are about what you're responsible for.

Dreams are about what you want.

And somewhere in a career of doing the first thing exceptionally well, a lot of accomplished people quietly lose access to the second one.

Where the Room Went

Here is the part nobody warns you about.

Dreaming requires unclaimed space.

Not free time — you might have some of that, in fragments. Unclaimed space is different. It's mental room that isn't already spoken for. Room where a want can form without immediately being evaluated for whether it's realistic, or affordable, or fair to the people who depend on you.

And responsibility fills that room completely.

Work takes some. The people at home take some. The board seat, the aging parent, the kid who needs something you can't fix, the thing that has to be handled before Monday.

None of it is bad. Most of it, you chose. Some of it is the best of your life.

But it is all claimed.

And unclaimed space doesn't send a notice when it disappears. It doesn't show up on a calendar as a blocked hour you can defend. It just gets smaller, and you adapt, and you're good at adapting — that's part of why you've done so well.

Until one day someone asks what you want, and the honest answer is that you're not sure the question still applies to you.

This Is What It Looks Like From the Inside

In the last edition, I wrote about Devitalization — the slow erosion of aliveness that happens inside success, not because of failure.

This is one of its clearest signs, and one of the easiest to miss.

Not exhaustion. Not unhappiness. Not a crisis you could point to.

Just a narrowing.

The range of things you can imagine wanting gets smaller year over year, and because nothing dramatic happens on the way down, there's no moment where you notice it. You're still performing. You're still delivering. The reviews are still excellent.

You've simply stopped reaching for anything that wasn't already assigned to you.

And you can go a very long time like that.

I'm Not Going to Solve This Here

I could give you an exercise. Ten minutes a morning, a journal prompt, something to do on a Sunday.

I don't think that's what this moment calls for.

Because the thing worth doing right now isn't fixing it. It's noticing it. And noticing takes longer than we usually allow — it's why the question is more useful than an answer.

So let it sit.

Not as a task. Just as a question that's now in the room with you.

When was the last time you wanted something that wasn’t a goal?

If you can answer that quickly, good. Genuinely.

And if you can't — that's worth knowing too. It isn't a verdict on you or your life. It's information.

It means there's something in you that's been waiting a while for room.

It's still there.

One more thing, and then I'll leave you to it.

What was your most colorful dream?

Tell me in the comments — I'd love to know.

Keep Rising, My Friends! 💗

New editions of Beyond the Title come out on the first of each month.