You already know what you want. In fact, you want a great many things, and your interests run from one thing to the next to the next, until the bucket list is so long that choosing any single dream feels impossible. I know this from the inside, because I am a planner with a long list of my own, and for years it was genuinely difficult for me to tell which dream mattered most. When we want everything, we end up committing to nothing, and we tell ourselves we are too busy.

Underneath all of it, one dream is soul-deep right now. It is the one that keeps finding you in the shower, in the bath, on your commute, or out on a walk, the one you back-burnered or wrote on your New Year’s resolution list yet again. That dream stays with you year after year, because it is part of why you came to live this human life at all. The real question is which of your many dreams is that one, and how to choose it and hold to it.

One

Most of what we believe we want, we absorbed. Psychologists call it mimetic thinking. As children we learn how to be people, how to want what we want and how to behave acceptably, by mimicking our parents and the adults who care for us. That is wonderful and essential, and it is also true that each of us is a completely unique being with an absolutely unique signature. So many of your dreams are borrowed, and one of them is the quiet dream that bubbles up from within and seems too challenging, too impractical, or beyond your capacity, and yet is so true.

The first honest question is what you think you should want, set beside what you actually want. I practiced real estate for very wealthy people for many years, and I still practice real estate, and for a long time I thought I should want that lavish lifestyle, with the Hermès wardrobe, the Ferrari, and homes around the world. Some of it is truly mine, because I love beautiful, quality clothing and I am happy to pay appropriately to look good. Cars, on the other hand, interest me about as much as a pack of mints at the grocery checkout.

What I actually want, deeply, is to see as much of the world as I can. I love meeting people everywhere I go and seeing the astonishing nature of every place, and because I rarely want to visit the same place twice, homes around the world hold little appeal for me. My husband says I pack too much into our trips, and I happily do all the planning, from the guidebooks to the hidden gems in Atlas Obscura, while leaving room for the spontaneous adventures that always seem to find us with the local people we meet. Finding the dream that is yours takes more than hope.

Two

The next honest question is what you get out of not going after it. Right now I am going after the dream of being a published author, and my mission is for people to read this book, because I refined the system until it became a blueprint that anyone can read in a few hours and use to make a dream come true. If I had never gone after it, I would have far less stress and far more peace of mind. Making videos and sharing my own experience feels very exposing to me, and I could have remained a completely private person and coasted through an easy, ultra-chill life. I have lived that way, and I stopped charging into each day with joy. Now I am a little stressed and I feel very exposed, and I am deeply inspired by where this dream could go.

Then ask what making the dream come true would cost you. When a dream comes true, it changes you, and the people most attached to the old version of you will feel that change, and some of those relationships will fall away. When I look ahead, I see less time lying on the outdoor bed on my spa porch staring at the sky, because I will be on book tour, signing books, and meeting readers. I will be busier and a little more stressed, and I am willing to give that up, along with the relationships that were tied to earlier versions of myself.

Three

The last honest question is what you are afraid would disqualify you. My own list came rushing up the moment I asked. What if my writing is garbage, or the ideas are? What if I lack the chops to be an author, a calling I hold in such reverence? What if I have done too many embarrassing things, or I am too woo-woo, or the psychic part of my work frightens people away?

Naming these fears is like identifying the rocks along the shoreline when you are in a boat on a river. You name them so you know where they are, and when you notice yourself steering toward them, you turn back to the open water, because the open water is where the dream lives. People will say unkind things, and there will be trolls and terrible reviews, and all of it will happen to every one of us in every dream. Once the one true dream has been pulled from the pile, the work is to believe yourself, all the way down, because that soul-deep dream will keep returning to you until you do.

Four

Choosing one dream means saying no to everything that drowns it out, the borrowed wants, the outside voices, and the time-wasting habits we reach for without thinking. Move the scrolling, the endless screen time, and the excessive television out of the way. Rest is essential, and when you want to rest, then truly rest, with your eyes closed, in a nap, or in a little yoga. I am not always great at this myself, so let us remind each other.

Honesty and Rejection are two of the five moves of the HEART Method in the upcoming book, How the Dream Comes True: A Psychic’s Guide to Getting What You’ve Always Wanted, which publishes this November. Honesty pulls the one true dream out of the pile, and Rejection clears away everything that competes with it.

Choose the one dream you could make meaningful progress on, or even bring across the finish line, by the end of this year, and take your next step later today or tomorrow morning. I would love to know what your dream is, whether you are writing a book, creating a piece of art, looking for love, or searching for a new career, because if we are here to do anything, it is to inspire each other, encourage each other, support each other, and keep each other going.

Choose Your One Dream

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— Juli Martin, The Love Lady