Accepting a dream into my life feels like dating a new love. But how do you make a dream truly work and survive the first weeks of crazy effort and emotions? Every new thing we start takes up more space than we expect — in our day, in our mind, in our heart.
I didn’t know that at first. I thought new things would just blend in somehow. But everything I started ended as soon as I was done with preparations. Why?
When we start something new, people talk about consistency, goals, to-do lists… Everyone talking about success makes it sound like all you need is discipline — and that’s it. But for some people, it doesn’t work like that at all — for fuck’s sake. The first thing they need to get used to is not burning out their dreams with emotions and motivation.
For me, discipline is something external. You focus on completing a task without taking into account anything you think or feel. It’s a great tool, in my opinion, when you learn to use it at the right moment. But the world isn’t that simple or black and white. A lot of people kill their dreams because too much is happening inside them at once, and they can’t handle it — they just get pulled under.
So how do we get to the point where we actually continue? By learning how to accept a dream into our lives regularly — and not lose our shit over it.
Sometimes a new habit doesn’t fail because we’re not ready, but because we never gave it enough space to live with us. Like any relationship — it grows when you spend time together.
What if all it needed was time and a few regular dates? Every new dream wants your time, your presence and a little patience. And we all know how easy that is, right? Let’s see how to date your dream for more than just a few weeks…
Dating your dream — keep yourself alive beyond week one
You’ll want it to be perfect — and this is how it will end up. Would you show up to your first coffee date in a limo and a tux? Or dressed like you’re going to the Oscars, when all you wanted was a quiet walk and maybe a croissant? So begin there — preferably without a to-do list or a big goal.
Get ready to be disappointed. I know, you want to figure out if you’re a match, if you’re compatible, if you could maybe get married and have two kids. You can hardly start a business (or a dream) like it’s your wedding day — with a five-year strategy, a flawless website and a perfectly structured offer that everyone will love, even if you badly want to. So expect it — first dates usually suck.
Don’t be hard on yourself if you’re not in love. You don’t have to show up with your dedication like you’ve just had three espressos and a life-changing revelation. You don’t need to impress your dream by being perfectly motivated. You can be annoyed or wear your emotional pajamas and still show up for the date.
If you ghost it… It won’t text you “seen”, get mad or find someone else. It’ll just wait — quietly, patiently, like the most loyal love. Real dreams don’t go away. They stay exactly where you left them, tapping their foot, waiting for you to come back and start again.
Give it space, but not silence. Sometimes it’s just tea, not champagne. And that’s fine. If you force yourself to “work on it” just to stay consistent, you’ll start to hate it. Let it rest when you need to. The best things often start like a Monday morning — slow, frustrating and with dark circles under your eyes.
And most importantly — keep dating it. One regular date at a time — and you’ll realize the dream has become real!
Sooo, how do I actually make sure it does not evaporate from my life?
Work every while. New things take space, more than you think. They eat your evenings, sneak into your thoughts and steal mental breaks. They’ll make you come back again and again, with new ideas buzzing at 6 a.m. or 11 p.m. But that’s okay. That’s just your dream trying to get you to do something about it.
Make space for it. Sometimes it can be annoying, living with your dream. You’ll have to notice it, make some space and accept that it’s now living with you — between your work, your laundry and your Saturday coffee. It’ll be waving at you from the corner of your mind, knocking on your forehead, like: “Hey, you, remember me?” Lol.
But living with your dream gives you something deeper — a quiet sense of love, meaning and peace. That beautiful feeling that everything is, somehow, just right.
Be patient, and stay. Because the first stage of anything new is mental and emotional chaos. You’ll do it a hundred times before it feels natural — and that’s still progress. Patience isn’t passive. It’s how you stay long enough to see things bloom.
In practice — How not to keep your ideas on hold for ages (handling the ugly parts)
Surprise No 1 — Nothing happens if I avoid the “dishes part” of a dream. A great example came with my phone. When I decided to start being active on social media, I didn’t realize I’d have to hold that phone in my hand ten times more than usual. I thought new things would just blend in somehow and I didn’t want them to be another daily task that´s annoying…
It became clear very fast — If I wanted to post during a week regurarly, then putting my phone in the drawer all day (like I used to), just wouldn’t work. The content simply wouldn’t appear by itself. I got it.
If I wanted to succeed with something new, it would take ten times more time in my daily life than it ever had before. Like — fuck! That was such a genuin surprise!
Once I got used to the idea that this new activity would take up most of my free time — that it would wait for me every time I had a moment, that it would call me to sit down and do that one thing that had been on my mind — I stopped fighting with it.
Surprise No 2 — My vision worked great… until I actually had to leave my head. I probably never really knew how to make things happen, how to make them exist in my real life. I always kept them vivid in my visions — doing everything in my head instead.
I imagined myself doing it, powerfully reinforcing every detail of my vision and in my mind I dreamed of the perfect thing I was longing for…. especially when walking outside. The real progress was tiny, but my mind and heart was overloaded.
I actually had to accept that doing it isn’t as fulfilling as thinking about it, because that’s the exact feeling you’ll unconsciously want to avoid every time.
Surprise No 3 — Huge excitement is as useful against burnout as a sparkler is for lighting. And at the same time I was actually working like a horse for a few months and ended up depleted, because I completely overdid it with emotions and motivation, trying so hard to make it happen.
That’s why, after a few months, I was always exhausted and burned out. Everything fell apart — including me — and I needed a few months of doing nothing before I collect myself and could start again.
My inner vision drained me before I even started, so real steps felt heavier. And then I pushed hard with the force of my emotions, so I ended up wearing myself physically too.
Deep rest happens when we move our energy into real life. The secret? Get things done in small steps without getting stuck on the fact that everything isn’t in place yet. Not easy, I know, but from there calm replaces emotions, energy keeps popping up and you see things happen. Hello, good morning!
Stable energy, emotions under control, peace in mind… Let´s do it!
It’s like when a new man enters your life — suddenly he takes up all your heart and thoughts, even when you need to focus on other things. You think about him all the time, you want to see him, and when you don’t, it bothers you.
Soon you realize that being practical helps. At least it’s better than throwing all your energy at the wall like a runaway train…
Here´s the tea — if you come back to your dream every now and then, your system won’t produce such a strong amount of high energy and emotions, because it will know you’re here. Your dream wants you. It wants to come through, it wants to exist and show up.
That´s when you will see such a miracle as stable energy and emotions under control. So honestly? If you don’t sit down with that damn thing, your head full of ideas and emotions, will just explode.