What if You’re Thinking Too Small?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how often we tell ourselves to be realistic.

We do it with our careers, our relationships, our money, our dreams, even the lives we allow ourselves to want. We begin with what we truly desire, but almost immediately, another part of us steps in to assess whether it’s reasonable. Whether we’re qualified. Whether someone like us could actually pull it off.

And before we know it, we’ve diluted the dream.

To me, this is one of the most overlooked ways we limit ourselves. In the moment, we feel like we’re choosing what we really want, when we’re actually choosing through a lens of limitation.

Your Current Reality Is Not a Measure of Your Potential

Most of us look at where we are today and use it to determine what we should expect for tomorrow.

It makes sense. Our mind likes evidence. If you’ve never made a certain amount of money, built a successful business, had a healthy relationship, spoken in front of hundreds of people, or completely reinvented your life, there’s nothing in your past to prove that you can.

But your past shouldn’t be the evidence for your future.

If it were, none of us would ever try something for the first time.

This is where I think being “realistic” can become a problem. Realistic according to what? Your current circumstances? Your past experiences? The version of you who exists today?

Those things can tell you where you’ve been. They cannot tell you what you’re capable of becoming.

Sometimes We Dilute the Dream Before We Even Begin

One of the things I’ve noticed in my own life, and in working with clients, is that limiting beliefs don’t always sound negative.

Sometimes they sound completely rational.

I’d love to do that, but I should probably focus on something more practical.

That would be amazing, but I don’t know how I’d ever make it happen.

Maybe someday, but right now it just doesn’t make sense.

And sometimes those thoughts are true. There are real-life considerations we have to make. I’m not suggesting we throw logic out the window and call it manifestation.

But I do think we need to notice when practicality has become a way of protecting ourselves from wanting something we’re not yet sure we can have.

Because there’s a difference between deciding something isn’t right for you and convincing yourself you don’t really want it because wanting it feels too scary.

Give Yourself Permission to Want It Before You Know How to Have It

This is one of the reasons I love dream building and visualization so much. They give us an opportunity to step outside the boundaries of our current reality for a minute and explore what we would actually choose if we weren’t immediately responsible for figuring out how to make it happen.

I think we focus way too much on the “how.”

The minute we have a desire, we want a plan. And when we can’t see the plan, we start questioning the desire.

But some of the biggest changes in my life began long before I knew how they were going to happen. I could see something for myself before I had any idea how I would get there. The path began to reveal itself as I grew into the person who was capable of walking it.

That’s an important distinction because you don’t have to know how to create the entire life you’re imagining today. You just have to be willing to stop dismissing it because you can’t see the path yet.

Expand What Feels Possible

In my work, I talk about something I call the Zone of Possibility™. It’s the place where your desire for something meets your belief that it can actually happen for you.

Both matter.

You can have a strong desire for something, but if part of you believes there’s no chance you could ever have it, it’s going to be very difficult to move toward it. On the other hand, believing something is possible doesn’t mean much if you don’t genuinely want it.

The work is to expand the space where those two things meet.

That doesn’t happen by forcing yourself to believe something that feels completely impossible. It happens by stretching your idea of what could be possible for you.

Maybe the dream feels too big right now. Fine. What would make it feel 5% more believable? What experience could you expose yourself to? What would you need to learn? What small decision could you make differently? Who would you need to start becoming?

Every time you expand what you believe is possible, you open yourself to a reality that once felt out of reach.

And sometimes that begins with admitting that you want more than you've been willing to say out loud.

A Question From Your Future Self

If you stopped asking what was realistic and allowed yourself to imagine what you really wanted, what would you choose?

And where might you be diluting that desire because you haven’t figured out how to make it happen yet?

You don’t need the whole plan today. Maybe your first step is just being honest with yourself about what you want.

Because you can’t create a reality you won’t even allow yourself to imagine.