You Can Follow Any Dream But Not Every Dream

The power of singularity in pursuing your dreams.

My high school classmate went on to become a world-famous actress.

A famous Hollywood actress who has appeared in dozens of movies that you’ve likely seen. She has won the Oscars, won the Golden Globes, and multiple film awards.

She grew up in a regular middle-class family in Northern California and attended my high school. She was part of the creative but often shunned high-school drama crowd that regularly acted in school plays and performed in theater.

All she was into was drama and theater. I saw her act in many of them. She barely attended classes and didn’t even attend our high school graduation. In fact, she had so many absences, that they wouldn’t let her graduate.

At that time, she cut school during school time to read Shakespeare in her car. Not so she could become a world-famous actress who won Oscars but simply because acting was her purpose, passion, and her dream.

Imagine being so fixed on your dream that you forget about high school and graduating it. My classmate chased her dreams with a singular purpose.

She eventually went to community college to get her diploma and enrolled in an arts academy. She later was accepted to Julliard and attended to study theater and acting.

After graduation, she’s been in some of the most acclaimed movies that have been created in my lifetime. She’s known around the world for her different roles on the big screen. She has 5 million followers on Instagram.

While my friend was acting in high school, I was on the student council.

I had always been drawn to politics and was elected to various class representative positions while growing up.

When I graduated high school, I ended up working on political campaigns in college. When I graduated, I started a political consulting firm to help candidates run for office. I called it the V Team — V for victory and Team for my one team-mate!

Most of my candidates lost but that’s beside the point. I took on candidates that could afford me and usually who didn’t have big money interests supporting them. The candidates who hired me were idealists that wanted to get their message out. They had passion and drive, not money. I ran their campaigns and tried to help them get elected to various political offices.

When I graduated, I left politics to go practice law but ultimately knew that I would go back to the political world. I continued to help candidates get elected and help raise money for candidates. I attended all the political events, was active in my local political clubs and kept up intensely with all the political chatter.

Eventually, when my life hit some turbulence, I wasn’t sure about the career path I had chosen and was starting to have second thoughts. A divorce led me to blogging and sharing experiences about my divorce on a blog that started getting traction.

More than 20,000 started reading this blog each month and I started creating weekly posts and videos for my readers.

Over a couple year period, I went from aspiring politico to an aspiring writer as well.

My mornings would be spent writing and my evenings would be spent on politics. I continually had to balance the two things in my life but both took a hit. Politics took up my writing time and writing took up my political time.

After several years of writing, I began to question politics altogether. I know that politics been my dream most of my life and what I had wanted to do since high school but was it what I wanted to do now in my 30's?

I slowly began to see that I was now pursuing multiple dreams. I was dividing my efforts in my spare time. It wasn’t just politics anymore. It was writing now.

It wasn’t just getting involved in political campaigns and getting to political events. Now, it was brainstorming, idea creation, writing, and marketing my writing. It was listening to podcasts and taking courses. It was the actual time it took me to write.

In my mind, my focus began to get foggy. What did I want to do now? Still pursue the path of going into politics…a path that I had set out on or was my new path to become a writer and be able to help lots of people through my writing.

I dreamt of both, loved both, and pursued both.

Unfortunately, when you’re pursuing multiple dreams, you’re not doing any of them justice.

The shortest path to success is a singularity of purpose.

If you want to follow a dream and achieve it, my classmate’s accomplishment can serve as a solid reminder.

She chose her dream and pursued it without thinking twice about it. She had no backup plan and pursued her dream of acting exclusively.

On the other hand, I went back and forth between two dreams: going into politics and becoming a writer. I dabbled in both and got distracted from both.

It’s okay to have multiple dreams but to be the most successful and have the best shot of achieving one of them, you’re better off choosing one and going all in on that.

When you singularly pursue one dream, all your energy, efforts, thoughts and intentions will follow suit. When you’re all in one path, you open up the door to opportunities and unexpected assistance.

When you’re all in on one dream, you’re more likely to achieve it.

When you’re chasing multiple dreams, you’re more likely to get distracted and give up on all of them.

If you’re pursuing multiple dreams right now, you don’t need to put more effort to pursuing all of them. You don’t need more hours in the day. You don’t need to marinate in guilt that you’re not working on multiple dreams.

If you have multiple dreams, step back and reflect. Reflect, evaluate, and decide what dream you want to pursue. What is closest to your heart today? What is most fulfilling? And what are you willing to work for and work towards?

You don’t need any additional guidance on the dreams you’re pursuing.

All you need right now is clarity on which dream to pursue.

Multiple dreams are divided efforts. A singularly in your pursuit is concentrated effort.

Chose one dream and pursue that relentlessly. Stay diligent until you achieve it.

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How many dreams are you pursuing? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.