A thinksheet

The dream
you carry

Is the plan you made still serving the life you are making?

Jeannie Sullivan · jeanniesullivan.com

Before you start

Nobody is going to ask you to give up a dream. Least of all me.

That is the fear that keeps most people from doing this exercise, so let me put it down first. This is not a page for talking yourself out of anything.

Here is what I have watched happen instead, over years of sitting with people at exactly this crossroads. They are carrying a plan they made a while ago. It is a good plan. They are still fond of it. And it has quietly become the reason they cannot say yes to the thing in front of them, because saying yes would mean admitting the plan has changed.

Most of the time the plan does not need to be abandoned. It needs to be reordered, so it can sit behind something that matters more right now rather than competing with it. That reordering is small on paper and hard in the chest, and it is very difficult to do in your head. It wants a page.

So: three pages, three honest lists. What you have been carrying. What you are actually building. And the space in between, which is where the interesting part lives.

Give it half an hour and nobody watching. Take the chair you think best in, whatever you like to drink, and a pen you enjoy holding. Write the unflattering version. There are no wrong answers on a page only you will read.

— Jeannie

One

What you have been carrying

A dream you have held a long time, or committed to deeply. Write it plainly, the way you first said it to yourself.

Worth asking while you write

How old were you when you first made this plan, and who were you then? What was it going to give you that you did not have at the time? Who have you told? Does that make it harder to change?

Two

The life you are creating now

Not the five-year version. The one with this month’s actual Fridays in it.

Worth asking while you write

What has quietly become precious that you did not plan for? Who is counting on you in a way you would not want to give up? What did you say yes to this year that surprised you?

Three

The space in between

Read both pages back. Most of what you find will fall into one of these two columns.

Where they already agree

The parts of the dream this life can hold as it is, sometimes in a smaller or better form.

Where they are competing

The places you cannot have both. Name them honestly. This is the short list that matters.

A dream that competes on one point is usually asking to be reordered. A dream that competes on every point is asking to be put down.

The only question

Is this dream supporting the life I am creating now?

Not the life you were creating when you first had it. This one. If the answer is no, the next question is the harder one: will you find the courage to put it down?

Reordered is not deleted. Most things you set down here you will pick up again later, in a shape that fits your hands better.