When to let go of your dreams

When to give up on your dreams. Society tells us to go after our dreams. And to never give up on them. I don’t agree.

In this video, I tell the story of giving up on my childhood dream – something which was incredibly hard to let go of, but was also the making of me.

From the age of eight, I had wanted to be an actor. I loved drama and being on stage and I loved acting. I soon discovered a passion for cinema, and like millions of young people, I had visions of being an actor on the big screen.

It was a dream which I pursued throughout my teenage years and beyond school. I went to Warwick University to study Theatre and Performance Studies and I was 100% committed to following my dream. That was until I realised that I wasn’t very good at what I had always wanted to do…

Being a bad actor was a painful realisation, but one which mercifully I discovered at the right time in my life.

Many peoples’ dreams are broken by death or the break up of a relationship. The death of my acting dream was not caused by anything or anyone else. It was just the dawning realisation that everything I had hoped for and dreamed of wasn’t really meant for me.

This dream I had been pursuing all my life wasn’t going to make me happy. And knowing that, I realised that my acting dream was dead. Life changes. We change as people. It’s only natural that our dreams change too.

It was a horrible realisation. Losing a dream – particularly a childhood dream – is literally a death and it feels like one too.

But my pain was short-lived. I found something else that I was even more excited about. In short, it’s fine to give up on your dream, but only if you find a better one to pursue.

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