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Dreams Are Made, Not Found · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for creative success.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most pervasive ideas in Western culture is the concept of finding your dreams.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody knows for sure where this idea came from, but it's probably been around in some form or another as long as there have been stories about heroes and their goals.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea of finding your dream goes something like this.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: The main purpose of your life, vocationally speaking, is to set out and go forth in search of this elusive dream.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this dream is what you're meant to do.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's granted by some otherworldly force or power out there.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And your task, should you choose to accept it, is to keep seeking and searching, to keep defeating obstacles and overcoming the naysayers until that dream becomes a reality.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, there's some truth to that story and that overarching idea, and most anybody who's achieved anything worthwhile has defeated obstacles and ignored the naysayers.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the main fault in this philosophy of finding your dream is that a dream is out there somewhere, and that if you work hard enough and seek it out, you'll eventually stumble upon it or you'll find it or it'll be granted to you somehow.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the truth is that dreams are not found.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: A dream doesn't exist out there somewhere.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The whole idea of finding your dream is based on the idea that you're mainly a passive observer to your own life.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: In truth, a dream doesn't exist anywhere outside of yourself.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: A dream is created from within.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of writers operate by this idea of just passively waiting for their dream to come true.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they'll get discovered by an agent or a publisher.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that book will magically get written.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe somebody will hand them that opportunity that they've been waiting for.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, that's not how things actually work.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, people do get discovered sometimes and their dreams do come true, but for the vast majority of writers, their dreams become reality because they just worked really hard for them.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: They did the work and they put in the years of effort and built their platform, they built their business, and they built their success one brick and one day at a time.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just the cold hard truth.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the cool thing is that it's also the most liberating thing you can possibly hear.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your dreams are not out there somewhere just waiting for you to stumble upon them.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Your dreams are in there in your mind and your heart.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: However, it's up to you to do the work and take those dreams from the realm of possibility into the realm of reality.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.