Should You Take the Plunge to Follow Your Big Dreams?

How far should you go for your big dreams?

Imagine you’re in the midst of a robbery. The masked villain is pointing a gun at you, saying a phrase you’ve heard a gazillion times in movies.

Except, you suddenly realize that the phrase is not quite the same. This particular gun-wielding baddie shouts:

“Your money or your life purpose!”

As a coach, I notice that that’s how many people feel when it comes to their work.

It feels like they have to make an impossible choice: having financial security or following their hearts.

For instance, a while ago I talked to a young accountant. She asked herself if she should take “the plunge” and leave her job.

Even though she had a successful career, her heart was not in her work and she wanted to start her own business instead.

And yet, it was hard for her to come to a decision. Should she really leave her successful career to try something completely different, with no guarantee that it would work out?

This is a common question that people in her situation have.

When you’re in that place, it is as if your “inner realist” and your “inner optimist” are fighting with each other about what to do.

“Don’t quit!” advises the inner realist. “Do it! Take the plunge!” shouts the inner optimist.

The inner realist doesn’t want you to hand in your notice to follow your big dreams until you have a better alternative at hand.

This voice points out that financial security is ever-important: You have to prepare for retirement, pay for health insurance and meet your basic needs. If other people are dependent on you, you also need to be able to provide for them.

In short, you have to be realistic about what to do with your life because you have responsibilities.

To further complicate things, your current and future responsibilities exist alongside past decisions. Many times, the circumstances of your current reality have been set in place a long time ago and do not adequately reflect who you are today.

Given all this, your inner realist advises you that the best thing you might do for yourself and for the ones you love is to keep your current job. This can, according to the inner realist, lead to rewards further down the road.

Your inner optimist points out that if you listen to the realist’s perspective, you’ll likely put off your dreams indefinitely.

Just as the time is never right to have a child, your inner optimist explains, the time will never be right to make a drastic career change to follow your true passion.

Thus, your inner optimist advises you to make a radical change right away — to simply hand in your notice.

An adage the inner optimist strongly resonates with is: “Do what you love and the money will follow.” To back this up, your inner optimist has compiled an impressive list of people who successfully build their dream lives.

Unlike your inner realist, your inner optimist encourages you to follow your heart and pursue your dreams. But is there possibly a smarter, more effective way of doing it?

As is often the case in life, there is a middle way.

To learn more about it, let us turn our attention to the inner sage.

The inner sage advises you to be both prudent and daring.

The inner sage advises you to be both prudent and daring. Your inner sage asks you to follow your dreams without taking excessive risks. Take, for instance, a business consultant who completes a coach certification program in his free time and starts building his new business on the side.

While the inner sage cares about making rational choices, it also asks you to be aware of something that is rarely mentioned.

That missing aspect is the mystery-of-it-all.

Often, when people consider making any big change in their lives, they approach it with their rational minds only.

However, as your inner sage points out, things may be less in your control than you think they are.

The work that’s yours to do is sometimes referred to as your “calling.” Your inner sage likes this word because being “called” has a passive/receptive aspect to it. While parts of your journey require action taking, sometimes you need to get out of the driver’s seat.

The truth is that it is impossible to foresee what will happen once you start following your own path.

Your inner sage reminds you that before you make a big change, you can only assume how things will develop. When you actually start following your path, there is often noticeable support for you.

This is different from the inner optimist’s naïve assumption that success will surely come, an assumption that’s based on entitlement.

How then, do you live this in reality? For this, let’s turn to the inner pathfinder.