Do you remember being five years old and fully believing you were going to be a princess, a superhero, or an astronaut when you grew up? Or maybe at ten, you were absolutely convinced you were going to become a famous athlete, singer, or actor.
I remember being twelve and believing I was going to have my own talk show like Oprah Winfrey. I remember telling my guidance counselor that junior year of high school when she asked us about our future careers and five- and ten-year plans.
Her response? “That’s not a real career. You need to be realistic.”
Entrepreneurship was not an acceptable answer either.
It felt like everyone around me had slowly traded their dreams for the standard approved responses: teacher, lawyer, doctor. And listen, those are incredible careers. They create impact, meaning, and stability. But I remember sitting there wondering if every student in the room genuinely wanted those lives or if, somewhere along the way, they had simply learned what answers were considered acceptable.
I wondered what it must feel like to dream of something practical and tonaturally want something society already approved of. Because I never did.
Lately, I’ve been having a lot of conversations about this—about childhood, joy, dreams, and the moments where people stopped believing they were allowed to want more. And one thing I kept hearing over and over again was this: people were forced to grow up too fast. Life stopped being about joy and imagination and slowly became about responsibility, survival, and doing what made sense.
It made me realize that most people do not lose their dreams in one big moment. It happens slowly as life starts to feel more serious, more practical, more about what makes sense than what actually feels good. And before you even notice it, you start making decisions based on what feels realistic instead of what you actually want.
You were taught to adapt, to fit in instead of stand out, and to think about limitations before possibilities. The “what ifs” get louder than the excitement. And without realizing it, you drift away from the version of yourself who used to want things without overthinking them.
This month is about going back to that version of you. Not to stay there, but to listen to her. Because, I promise, she is still there.
Before You Learned to Overthink Everything
There is a version of you that existed before you started managing perception, filtering your desires through other people’s expectations, and questioning whether what you wanted made sense.
That version of you did not overexplain her dreams or try to make them practical before she allowed herself to want them. She just wanted them. She saw possibility everywhere.
But somewhere along the way, many of us stopped trusting ourselves and started adapting to what felt acceptable. What we wanted got replaced with what we thought we could realistically have.
I think about my high school guidance counselor a lot. When she went around the room asking us about our career plans, I confidently said I wanted to be the next Oprah Winfrey. I wanted my own talk show by day and to be an entrepreneur by night. She got frustrated with me. I was not being realistic.
When I said I wanted to go to the University of Florida, she told me that was probably a reach too. Spoiler alert: I went to UF, graduated in two and a half years, earned both my bachelor’s and master’s degree, and became a double Gator.
What stayed with me was not that she doubted me. It was realizing how easily other people’s limitations can become your own if you are not careful. Sometimes people are not responding to your potential. They are responding to what they believe is possible for themselves.
We Stop Dreaming Without Realizing It
Most people cannot point to the exact moment they stopped dreaming because it rarely happens all at once. Sometimes it is a comment that makes you second guess yourself, a disappointment that makes you play smaller, or a responsibility that becomes louder than a desire.
And eventually, dreaming gets replaced with managing expectations, finances, and responsibilities. You stop asking yourself, What do I want? and start asking, What makes sense? At first, this feels mature, what adults might label as responsible. But if you stay there too long, you start disconnecting from yourself.
At one point in college, I started listening to all the external voices telling me who I should be. I started considering law school. I took the LSAT. I ended up getting my master’s degree in information systems and operations management even though, if I am being honest, trying to code made me miserable.
For a while, I forgot about my dreams because everyone around me convinced me they were impossible. And yet, even in the middle of trying to become someone else, something still felt off. Me and my life started to feel disconnected.
Little You
I think we are way too quick to dismiss younger versions of ourselves as naive. What if they were not naive? What if they were just unfiltered?
They had not yet learned to doubt themselves. They had not learned to shrink their desires to make other people comfortable. They had not confused practicality with identity. And maybe the goal is not to become that exact version of yourself again, because you do have real responsibilities. However, maybe the goal is to reconnect with what brought her joy.
An Algorithm
Your life is shaped by what you repeatedly engage with. What you give attention to becomes what you notice more of, what you tolerate becomes what you normalize, and what you repeatedly choose becomes your default setting.
Over time, this builds an internal algorithm for what you believe is possible for you. If you repeatedly choose what feels safe over what feels aligned, your identity learns limitation. If you repeatedly choose what feels true, even when it is uncomfortable, your identity learns expansion.
Belief is not something you wait for, it is something you train.
After multiple suicide attempts landed me in a psych unit, I felt completely lost. Who am I? Where do I belong?
About three months later, I made the decision to write about my experience. I posted a blog sharing what led me there and what my time in treatment was actually like. People started responding with their own stories. And somewhere in that process, I rediscovered what brought me joy: writing, connection, and using my experiences to help people feel less alone.
The thing I had always dreamed about had been there the entire time. I had just stopped listening to it.
What You Loved
The things you loved when you were younger were not random. They were clues.
I am not saying if you wanted to be a princess at five, that somehow translates literally. But maybe you loved leadership, imagination, creativity, helping people, and adventure. Maybe the dream itself changed, but the essence of it stayed the same.
Purpose is often less about discovering something new and more about reconnecting with what was already there.
When I posted that first blog after treatment, something opened back up inside me. I loved it. That blog post eventually turned into a nonprofit, then came public speaking getting to travel around the country sharing my story.
Maybe I never got the talk show, yet. But in a lot of ways, I still built the thing younger me dreamed about. I use my words to help people, tell stories, and create conversations that matter. Turns out, little me knew more than I gave her credit for.
You Are Integrating
This is not about becoming who you were when you were younger, it is about paying attention to what got buried. What parts of yourself got edited? What dreams got dismissed? What joy got replaced with practicality?
Little you still has something to say. The question is: are you listening?
This month is about paying attention to what still feels alive underneath everything else. Not what is practical, what other people expect, or what looks impressive from the outside. The work is not about becoming someone different, it is just about remembering who you were before you stopped listening.
