How to not give up on your dreams:
You prevent the problem of giving up on your dreams by being intentional about what you want, getting clear about your purpose, striving to follow your plan to create that purpose in the world, and being willing to adapt your methods and evolve as you embark upon the journey of creating the destiny you desire.
If you’re like most people, you have a dream for how you’d like your life to turn out.
Maybe you’d like to make a certain amount of money, have a certain kind of dating life, live in a certain type of house, drive a certain type of car, work in a particular type of vocation, etc.
This is good. Dreams are awesome.
We should all dream big dreams, and we should all believe in our ability to create the life and destiny we truly want for ourselves.
But sometimes, it’s easy to lose faith.
Sometimes, as you go through life, you’ll get discouraged and think to yourself:
“This is impossible. I may as well just give up and turn back.”
I know exactly how this feels.
Back in 2017, my marriage (and subsequently, my life) fell apart all around me.
I was financially broke and emotionally broken. I was depressed, out of shape, lonely, terrible at dating, and hopeless about the future.
But instead of giving up, I decided to keep fighting for my dreams.
And this led to a total life reset where I learned to start actually creating the life I wanted for myself.
In this blog post, I’m going to share the 12 most important steps that I learned as I embarked on this process.
Here’s how to not give up on your dreams.
Note: If you’re interested in the content matter of this post, then you’ll definitely be interested in our master guide to embarking on your hero’s arc. Make sure to check that out to get a full rundown of the entire process, from beginning to end, along with a full list of resources and other guides.
12 Tips For How To Not Give Up On Your Dreams
1. Embrace The Alpha Mentality
(Also read my full guide to embracing the alpha mentality.)
To be alpha really all comes down to being intentional, living with a purpose, and determining to be the highest value man or woman in the room.
This is where it all starts.
By choosing to be intentional and to take action to achieve your dreams in life, you’re committing to the process of continuing onward instead of giving up and succumbing to the chaos around you.
This is the first and most vital step on the road to achieving your dreams.
2. Build Your Dreams At A Sustainable Pace
It’s important to understand that it takes time and consistency to build amazing and significant dreams.
Jumping all in by making radical, chaotic, and ill-planned changes could threaten to set you back if you make the wrong choices.
Sometimes, failure is a good thing. But sometimes, making completely unwise choices in the pursuit of short-term gains can actually set you back.
In my own life, I committed to becoming 1% better every single day.
If you work every single day to learn and to make progress toward your dreams, and commit to staying patient and grinding it out for the long term—you’re going to equip yourself with much better odds for success.
3. Understand That There’s No Such Thing As A Safe Comfort Zone
(Also read my guide to having faith in your future.)
When I was young, I was literally addicted to the idea of sitting in the comfort zone.
I didn’t want to take any risks or face any danger.
But this was actually a death sentence disguised by the idea of false safety—and it led to my life literally crashing and burning all around me.
There’s no such thing as a safe comfort zone.
We either choose to embark on our hero’s arc, or we perish in the ruins of our deteriorating life by sitting where we are and refusing to move.
4. Write Down Your Dreams To Turn Them Into Goals
We often think of dreams as visions of what we would like our lives to be like if we could create whatever destiny we wanted.
But most people don’t see their dreams as being realistic and achievable.
To change this, start writing down your dreams as actual goals.
Use the SMART goal format to create achievable goals that you could actually manifest through effort and energy in your life.
This is the first step to actually making your dreams a reality instead of giving up on them.
5. Make A Plan Of Action
As you write down your goals, make a plan to achieve them.
At first, this plan can be rough. But over time, you can add some specifics and refine it.
Ideally, you’ll want to create plans in all 9 of the vital life domains.
If you don’t make a plan, you’re much more likely to abandon your dreams and goals and give up on them.
6. Fill Your Mind With Positivity And Encouragement
When I first started my own alpha journey, I had to cut out a lot of negative people and influences.
I even stopped listening to depressing beta-mentality music, and started only listening to music that filled my mind with positivity, encouragement, inspiration, and motivation.
Start listening to motivational podcasts, reading awesome alpha-mentality books, and filling your mind with influences that’ll bring you hope instead of discouragement.
7. Stay Away From Negativity
Unfortunately, the world is full of negative people, things, and influences.
Staying away from negativity and keeping it out of your life is just as important as seeking out positivity.
Cut out negative naysayers, and surround yourself with people who will believe in you and speak power into your life.
8. Build Yourself Up To Be Truly Capable Of Achieving Your Dreams
(Also read my full guide to leveling up mind, body, and spirit.)
To achieve big dreams, you’re going to need to become your best self.
You’re going to need to dial in your health, wellness, and spirituality to accomplish this.
Start working out, eating a healthy diet, and getting quality sleep.
Engage in positive, nurturing relationships—and cut out habits and activities that will take you away from your overall wellness in life.
For example, try to quit drinking and smoking.
(Learn about my own journey to quitting alcohol.)
These habits may seem relatively harmless when you just do them from time to time—but you’d be surprised how much they take away from you and render you less capable of actually achieving your dreams in the long term.
9. Keep Moving Forward And Tracking Your Progress
As you become 1% better every day and move 1% closer to achieving your dreams, make sure that you track your progress and reward yourself for success.
If your goal is to create a million-dollar net worth, celebrate when you reach a milestone of $500 in your bank account.
This may seem like a small milestone, but $500 can turn into $1,000, and then $1,000 can turn into $2,000, etc.
If you continue this positive momentum, you’ll eventually succeed at accomplishing your dream.
So keep tracking your progress and keep moving forward.
Pay attention to the small wins, and let them motivate you to keep moving.
10. Keep Reviewing, Revising, Adapting, And Pivoting
As you go through life and deploy your plans to achieve your goals, you’re undoubtedly going to face failure.
This is a natural part of the process.
When you face failure instead of giving up and turning around, just review your plan, revise it as needed, adapt to the challenges, and pivot to overcome and reach new levels of success.
At first, you’ll probably need to adjust your plans and even the specifics of your dream to bring them more into alignment with your true alpha destiny.
Don’t resist this.
Be willing to evolve and become your best self through constant positive transformation.
This is how we learn to become better and more capable of achieving the things we desire.
11. Learn From Failures
Do not go to painstaking efforts to avoid failure.
Instead, face failure head on, learn from it, and incorporate those lessons into future endeavors.
Every failure is actually a painful, yet incredibly beneficial lesson in disguise.
The more we fail and learn from our failures, the better equipped we will be to succeed the next time around.
12. Never Give Up
At the end of the day, the journey toward accomplishing your dreams is going to be fraught with difficulties, defeats, failures, sadness, and suffering.
This is all just part of the journey.
It’s important that you don’t give up on the things you really care about.
In my life, I wanted to give up more times than I can count.
In fact, sometimes—when life got really bad and difficult—I would temporarily say to myself:
“That’s it. I’m quitting. I’m done with this.”
Then, I would go to bed, sleep it off, wake up the next day, and keep on going with a fresh mind and perspective.
This ‘never give up’ mentality empowered me to push through things that I never would have imagined I could overcome (even when I felt like I was truly at the end of the line).
And yet, the further I went and the more I overcame the challenges, the more I realized that I was actually capable of creating whatever kind of destiny I wanted for myself.
And guess what? You have this exact same ability.
All it takes is a commitment to keep moving forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it okay to give up on your dreams?
In my opinion, it’s only okay to give up on your dreams if those dreams actually cease to be your dreams.
For example:
When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a major-league baseball player. I worked ceaselessly to try to become the best baseball player I could be.
And yet, by the time I was 16 years old, I started to realize that I probably actually didn’t want to be a baseball player.
There were other things I wanted to do and accomplish with my life.
So I abandoned that dream and pursued different things.
But to me, this wasn’t about giving up on the dream of being a baseball player.
This was about realizing that I actually wanted something different, and then pivoting in a different direction.
Why do I give up on my dreams so easily?
The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of people give up on their dreams when they start to face failures, challenges, setbacks, and defeats.
These things can be very difficult to deal with emotionally and psychologically.
And a lot of people struggle to keep moving forward through these things.
It’s possible that you’re giving up on your dreams so easily because you haven’t learned the power of pushing through the difficulty and learning lessons from failure.
Why should you never give up on a dream?
If the dream is something that you actually want for yourself, then you should never give up on it—because you deserve the chance to create an amazing destiny for yourself.
If you don’t intentionally create your destiny, you can rest assured that nobody else is going to do it for you—and instead, you’ll live your life working to build someone else’s dream instead of your own.
So either you’re going to live a life of chaos and defeat, or you’re going to strive to push forward to achieve your dreams.
For me, the only true alpha mentality answer is to continue pushing forward and never give up on the things that really matter to you.
Be realistic about what you can achieve, set some achievable goals for yourself, make a plan, and get to work. Don’t be afraid to start small. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Brick by brick, the empire is built!
How do you know if you should give up on a dream?
In my way of thinking, the only time to give up on a dream is if you’ve chosen to pivot to accomplish something else that you want even more.
Now, keep in mind, not all of us are superheroes. And it is very possible to fail at a dream if you don’t approach it in the correct manner.
For some of us, there might actually be some dreams that aren’t directly possible.
For example—as a man approaching the age of 40, who isn’t necessarily incredibly athletically gifted, I would probably not be able to achieve the dream of becoming a major league baseball pitcher, especially at this point in my life.
However, if I truly loved the game of baseball, and if I was truly passionate about that aspect of the game (pitching), then I could pivot that passion into a dream that was better suited to my personal situation, skills, talents, and experience.
For example—I have very little skill in the area of pitching a baseball. But I have a lot of skill and experience in producing and marketing podcast episodes.
I could use these skills to start a baseball podcast that featured pitchers, and interview them to gain wisdom from their experiences to share with my audience.
Or, I could use my YouTube skills to create short film documentaries about the most famous baseball pitchers in history, and use that as a vehicle to pursue my passion.
See, sometimes, achieving your dreams means giving yourself room to pivot in a direction that will work best for you in the context of your life, and that’ll also empower you to leverage your own talents, skills, and abilities to give you the fullest possible advantage.
To me, this is not giving up on your dream.
This is called pivoting into a more strategically beneficial direction for your life and pressing onward toward success.
Final Thoughts
I hope that this post has helped you to understand my process for how not to give up on your dreams.
Personally, I think that far too many people give up on their dreams far too soon.
I hope that everyone reading this will take stock of their dreams, and start doing some ‘self-work’ to set some goals, make a plan, and start working toward success in their own life and on their own terms.
That’s all I’ve got for this one.
Go with grace, my friends, and never give up your power.
This is Joshua K. Sigafus, signing off.