Dreamer

Vision with action

“If money weren’t a factor, if fear weren’t a factor, if what people think weren’t a factor, what would you want to do with your life?”

—Sylvia L. Jones

I’m an idealistic dreamer. I’m not ashamed to admit that. And given the number of Disney princess references sprinkled throughout my writing, one can probably guess the kind of movies that I loved to watch growing up (and, who am I kidding, present day).

This week I’d like to spend some time exploring Tangled. A few days ago, I attended the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in northern Taiwan, which served as inspiration for the floating lanterns that Rapunzel always dreamt of seeing. 

For those who aren’t familiar with the movie, Rapunzel was stolen as a baby and locked away in a tower by a villain named Mother Gothel. Gothel painted the world as a scary, cruel place as a way of preventing Rapunzel from ever leaving the tower. Her exact words were,“The outside world is a dangerous place. Filled with horrible, selfish people. You must stay here, where you’re safe. Do you understand, flower?”

Oof…that hits a little too close to home.

Each year on Rapunzel’s birthday, her real parents (the King and Queen) would release lanterns into the sky, in hopes that the lost princess would one day find her way home. From the windows of her tower, Rapunzel watched those lanterns and eventually followed through on her dream of seeing them up close. In the process of turning her dream into a reality, she found adventure, love, and her true family.

Fluffy happily-ever-after feels aside, there’s something important to note here. She followed through on her dream of seeing those lanterns. Yes, she sang and dreamt like the rest of them, but she also knocked out a stranger with a frying pan and took that first terrifying step out of the tower, into the unknown.

This week, I want to explore why having the courage to dream and the commitment to take consistent action towards that dream is a potent combination, whatever your dream may be.

In July of 2021, somebody asked me, “What’s your dream?” At the time, I was at the peak of my aerospace career, just beginning to put down permanent roots in Boston. I was taken back. We were on a first date, and I certainly didn’t expect to dig this deep this fast. Thanks to some liquid courage from my mimosa, I was able to stammer out the seemingly embarrassing truth—some inarticulate desire to help people, pass on things I’ve learned, and so on. All I remember is that I ended my awkward string of blabber with the words “…I don’t know…and maybe write a book?” I also remember smiling and feeling really excited as I said those words out loud.

It all felt so hazy and abstract. I could barely believe those words myself once they left my mouth and took up space in the air of that crowded little diner. For starters, they had no place in the world I was living in. I was a Stanford engineering graduate nestled in the heart of Boston’s elite academic bubble. My circle consisted of Harvard and MIT researchers. The primary writing I did was scripts of code for data analyses on spacecraft mechanisms. The scenario that I word-barfed to my date felt as foreign and distant as living on Mars. Although, given my career at the time, I’d say that paying a visit to Mars seemed more plausible than writing about mental health and living all over the world.  

July 2021 was a year and a half ago.

Today, after following through on the craziest and most impossible dream I’ve ever had, there are two things I’ve come to understand.

1)    The vision is important

Dreaming is an important first step. Our beliefs form the foundation from which everything else flows. If you want to expand your life, you also have to be willing to expand your mind.

I remember once asking my Mom if she wanted to watch Eat Pray Love with me. She replied, “No I don’t, that’s not realistic. Nobody can live a life like that.”

Not with that attitude.

I share this anecdote not to throw shade at her way of thinking, but because I’ve found that our beliefs are reflected in the lives we live. If we don’t believe a different life is possible, then we’ve already shut the door. If I had listened to my mother’s advice—just buckle down and keep grinding away because nobody is supposed to like their job—I’d still be writing in Jupyter notebooks rather than on Substack. 

In my early career days, tucked away in an austere cube farm with my spacecraft CAD glowing in front of me, I would listen to travel podcasts as I clicked my mouse on autopilot. I’d go home and read books like Wild and Braver Than You Think, inspired but simultaneously believing it was the stuff of fantasy. These wild, brave women may have been able to pull it off, but I considered them extreme outliers. I decided that kind of lifestyle was not for a play-by-the-book Asian overachiever like me. Travel, in my mind, had to be confined to short vacations meticulously planned around the Q4 production schedule.

Sometimes we reject our own vision because we are afraid of judgement. We’re afraid that by thinking differently, people around us will think that we’re strange, whimsical, unprofessional, naïve, selfish or whatever else. I’ve come to discover that voicing the vision takes a lot of courage. While it may feel scary and uncomfortable to lean into one’s imagination rather than beat it down with fearful what-if’s, your dreams lie on the other side of that discomfort.

Rapunzel made an OG vision board—painting the lanterns she wanted to see on the wall. I didn’t have as much time or free wall space, so I put a picture of the lanterns on my Pinterest vision board. However you choose to transfer your own dream from your heart into the physical world, simply envisioning that it’s possible for you is a critical first step.

2)    The action is just as important

A quote that has always stuck with me since I first read it in James Clear’s 3-2-1 Newsletter is this one by Fredrick Douglas:

“Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.”

In other words, dreaming isn’t going to get you far until the day you couple that dream with action.

Some people talk about visualizing what you want, and then you’ll magically attract those things into your life. I could’ve sat behind a computer, visualizing backpacking through Asia for years, but that vision alone wouldn’t have gotten me to the other side of the world.

The road from Point A (corporate me in a button-down shirt writing code) to Point B (me in a sweater from a local market writing a story about lanterns) was paved with actions that can’t be captured on Instagram. The truth is, there’s nothing glamorous or photo-worthy about:

• Leaving behind a really solid job with great benefits

• Having that first terrifying conversation with my mother about my decision and countless follow-up conversations— so many hours spent learning to stand my ground as her powerful storm of doubt, fear, guilt, criticism, and shame swept me one step backward with every two steps I took forward

• Ripping out the roots I had lovingly put down in Boston

• Parting with the majority of my material belongings

• Getting coached—by myself and others—through an emotionally turbulent year of wanting to give up every other day

• Cold-messaging strangers outside of my engineering/aerospace/academia bubble

• Pushing through panic attacks in the weeks leading up to taking that flight out of the US

Rapunzel saw the lanterns through a slightly different set of actions

• Hiring a guide by stealing his satchel

• Befriending thugs and ruffians through song and dance

• Taming a misunderstood palace horse

• Swinging around on her super long hair like Tarzan on vines

Life is not a Disney movie. But the underlying message is the same—there’s no shortcut. If you dream of seeing the lanterns, you have to do the damn work.

On Instagram, we only see results. The picture of someone crossing the finish line at their first marathon, the breathtaking mountain scenery of Northern Vietnam, the happy smiling couple in matching pajamas. What we don’t see are all the actions that led up to such results—months of early morning training, a long and nauseating journey in a cramped sleeper bus, difficult conversations laden with tears. Chances are, very few people will actually know how much you hustled to turn your dream into a reality. Just like nobody will actually know if you’re secretly yearning for something different while living a seemingly perfect life.

But you will know. And at the end of the day, life is too short to be spent living out someone else’s dream.

Journaling—

Set aside 20-30 minutes in a quiet space to journal on Sylvia’s question.

If money weren’t a factor, if fear weren’t a factor, if what people think weren’t a factor, what would you want to do with your life?

Extra credit—

Look at your answer from the journaling exercise. Now imagine following through. Write down all the negative “what-if’s” that your brain can think of. This can look like:

• What if people make fun of me?

• What if it turns out to be a disaster?

• What if nobody cares?

Now for each of these items, write down the corresponding opposite “what-if”

• What if people receive me well?

• What if it turns out to be a success?

• What if there are people who care deeply?

Spend some time reviewing these two lists and let the thoughts sink in. Imagine one person filled their head with thoughts from the first list, and another filled their head with thoughts from the second. It’s time to place bets on who is more likely to turn their dreams into a reality. Who do you pick?