Episode 60: We’re Still Wild

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I think we’ve become a little too domesticated. We have a big idea and immediately make it reasonable. Something goes well, and we downplay it. We want more, but quickly explain that we’re already grateful for what we have. We accomplish something incredible and hesitate to celebrate too loudly because we don’t want to sound full of ourselves. And heaven forbid we admit that sometimes we actually want to win.

Somewhere along the way, ambition became a little embarrassing. We learned to soften the things we want before saying them out loud. Something we secretly hope will become much more gets casually called a hobby. “We’re just seeing where it goes” becomes the safe answer, even when we know exactly where we’d love for it to go. Before anyone else has even questioned the huge idea, we’ve already made it smaller, safer, and easier to explain.In a lot of ways, we’ve become incredibly good at teaching ourselves to behave.

That doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t want to build a life entirely around what feels safe or reasonable to say out loud. There should be room for the huge idea, the ridiculous goal, and the kind of excitement that is almost impossible to contain. Instead of deciding where something has to stop before it even begins, I’d rather stay curious about how far it could go. Maybe it’s time to loosen our grip on reasonable and get a little wild again.

What if you stopped making the dream reasonable before you discovered what it could become?

We’ve Been Using Our Imaginations All Along

We are unbelievably good at imagining disaster. Give us one small piece of uncertainty and we can take it miles. A strange email makes us wonder what’s wrong. A setback can make us question an entire plan. An unanswered text suddenly has a meaning we created entirely on our own. We can build an elaborate worst-case scenario from almost nothing, which means imagination itself clearly isn’t the problem. We’ve simply become very comfortable pointing it toward everything that could go wrong.

I think possibility deserves some of that imagination too. Instead of immediately asking what could fail, there is another question we rarely give ourselves enough time to consider:

How good could this get?

I love that question because it creates space before demanding answers. It doesn’t require proof that you can pull something off or a perfectly mapped route to get there. For a moment, it simply asks you to imagine what could happen if something went extraordinarily well.

Of course, most of us barely make it through that thought before another voice appears with, “Well, realistically…” We start explaining the obstacles before the possibility has had a chance to breathe. Reality matters, and eventually the money, timing, responsibilities, risks, and logistics will all deserve attention. But they don’t always have to be first. Sometimes an idea deserves a little room before we start deciding what it can and cannot become.

Reality will get its turn. But possibility gets to go first.

Let the Idea Get Bigger Before You Make It Smaller

Think about an idea you’ve had that carried some electricity with it. It might have been something you wanted to create, change, pursue, or become. Before you evaluated whether it was practical, there was probably a moment when the possibility itself excited you. Maybe you even caught yourself wondering, Could I actually do this? That moment matters because curiosity often arrives before confidence. You don’t need to know how far you can take something before you begin exploring it.

We tend to treat not knowing as a problem that needs to be solved immediately, but I think there is something incredibly exciting about it. You don’t know how good you could become at something you’ve barely started. You don’t know where one decision might eventually lead or what opportunities could appear once you put an idea into motion. There is so much of your own life that you haven’t seen yet, and there are versions of yourself that you haven’t had any reason to become.

Adulthood can make us forget that. We settle into routines and begin acting as though the broad outline of our future has already been written. There is work to do, bills to pay, dinner to figure out, laundry waiting somewhere, and another week coming right behind this one. Those things are real, but they aren’t the entire story. Your life still has the ability to surprise you, and perhaps more importantly, you still have the ability to surprise yourself.

You haven’t discovered everything you’re capable of yet. Why would you live as though you have?

I don’t want to spend the next twenty years simply proving everything I already know about myself. There is so much more to discover. Rooms I haven’t walked into yet, skills I haven’t developed, and ideas that might become even more interesting once I begin. The exciting part isn’t knowing exactly who I’ll become. It’s finding out. There are parts of us that only emerge when life requires them, and I think there is something incredibly hopeful about knowing that we haven’t met every version of ourselves yet.

It’s Okay to Want the Win

Part of letting ourselves imagine more also means being honest about what we want. Sometimes I want to win. I want something I’ve worked hard on to succeed. I want to reach the goal, see the number, celebrate the milestone, and experience that incredible moment when something works even better than I hoped it would. We spend so much time trying to appear humble that we sometimes forget there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting those moments.

Success can be fun. Progress can be fun. Surprising yourself can be incredibly fun. Wanting those experiences doesn’t mean you aren’t grateful for the life you already have, just as reaching one goal doesn’t mean you have to stop being curious about what comes next. Gratitude and ambition can exist comfortably in the same person. You can deeply appreciate where you are while still wondering where else you might go.

You can be grateful and hungry at the same time.

Something interesting happens when we finally reach a place we once dreamed about. What once seemed extraordinary slowly becomes familiar. A goal that occupied so much of our imagination becomes part of everyday life, and eventually we begin seeing things from a perspective we couldn’t have had before we arrived. New possibilities become visible because our view has changed.

That doesn’t mean we failed to appreciate what we accomplished. It simply means our world expanded. We can take the win, be proud of ourselves, enjoy the view, and then allow curiosity to pull our attention toward something new. That next thing doesn’t necessarily have to be bigger. It might be smaller, quieter, or completely different from what we once thought we wanted. The point isn’t endless expansion. The point is continuing to choose a life that feels genuinely ours.

Your Life Is Still an Adventure

I think we forget how much adventure is still available to us. Responsibility can make life feel predictable, especially once we have careers, families, homes, routines, and all the other structures that come with adulthood. It becomes easy to believe that adventure belongs to an earlier stage of life, before everything became so established. But choosing a path doesn’t mean the rest of the story has already been written.

There are strengths you haven’t tested, interests you haven’t discovered, people you haven’t met, and situations that will require something from you that life has never required before. There are decisions you haven’t made yet that could eventually introduce you to a version of yourself you cannot currently imagine. That possibility doesn’t disappear because you’ve reached a certain age or achieved a certain level of stability. Your life can still change shape, and so can you.

That is one reason I’m increasingly skeptical of the advice to “not get your hopes up.” I understand where it comes from. Disappointment hurts, and keeping expectations low can feel like a way to protect ourselves. But there is a cost to constantly preparing for disappointment before anything has even happened. If we aren’t careful, we can become so committed to protecting ourselves from the possibility of pain that we also protect ourselves from anticipation, wonder, and excitement.

Don’t spend your whole life protecting yourself from disappointment and accidentally protect yourself from excitement too.

If something incredible might happen, I want to enjoy the anticipation of it. I want the butterflies and the wonder. I want to allow myself to think, This could be something, even though I know there are no guarantees. If it doesn’t work, I can deal with that reality when it arrives. I don’t need to experience the disappointment in advance just to prove that I was prepared for it.

Give Possibility Somewhere to Go

Of course, imagination alone doesn’t build anything. Possibility without movement eventually becomes fantasy, and at some point the exciting idea has to leave your head and enter your life. That doesn’t mean you need the entire path figured out. It means you need to do one thing that makes the idea more real today than it was yesterday.

One of the easiest ways to talk ourselves out of starting is to focus on everything we don’t know how to do yet. We look at the entire distance between where we are and where we want to go, then interpret that gap as evidence that the idea is unrealistic. But of course you don’t know how to do everything required for something you’ve never done before. Learning is part of the process. You find the first move, make it, learn something, adjust, and then make another.

The challenge is not to shrink every idea until it fits comfortably inside the abilities you already have. Sometimes the challenge is to grow into the person who can carry it. That might mean learning something new, becoming more disciplined, asking for help, taking a risk, developing confidence through experience, or discovering strengths you had no reason to use before.

Don’t shrink the idea to fit the person you are today. Become capable of carrying it.

Somewhere in that process, something fascinating begins to happen. The ridiculous idea becomes less ridiculous. The intimidating thing becomes familiar. Something you weren’t sure you could do becomes something you now know how to do. What once existed only in your imagination begins taking up actual space in your life.

Then one day, almost without realizing exactly when it happened, you look around and think, Wait. This is happening.

There is nothing quite like that moment because now you know something you could never have known from the beginning. You know what happened because you went. You tried and you stayed curious long enough to find out.

Your Future Still Has Secrets

One of my favorite thoughts is that our futures still contain things we cannot see from here. There are moments coming that we couldn’t accurately predict today, and there are things that may eventually become completely normal to us that would absolutely blow our minds right now. There are people we haven’t met, places we haven’t gone, opportunities that don’t exist yet, and ideas that haven’t even occurred to us.

Our future still has secrets, and I don’t think uncertainty has to be something we constantly try to eliminate. Not knowing exactly how everything will turn out leaves room for mystery. Discovering it as we go is part of the adventure, and refusing to make our lives smaller just to make them easier to predict keeps something deeply alive in us.

Your future still has secrets. Maybe you aren’t supposed to know everything yet. Maybe you’re supposed to go find out.

I want the surprise and the story that comes with it. Most of all, I want that moment when something that once seemed completely out of reach becomes real, and all I can think is, you have got to be kidding me. We actually got here. I want ideas that require me to grow and experiences I couldn’t have completely planned from the beginning. I want something worth getting excited about.

How Good Could This Get?

So rather than ending with ten reflection questions or another list of goals, I think one question is enough. Think about something in your life that you’ve been making reasonable. Go back to the idea before you edited it, explained it, or decided what everyone else might think about it. Give yourself permission to imagine the version that still has some electricity in it.

How good could this get?

You don’t need to manage the answer immediately. You don’t need to make it practical or prove that it can happen. Give possibility a moment to go first. Then, once you’ve actually allowed yourself to see what you want, ask the question that brings you back into motion:

What would I have to do to find out?

That is where possibility becomes interesting, because now you aren’t demanding a guarantee. You’re choosing discovery. You’re giving yourself permission to move toward something without knowing exactly where the road will lead.

The next time a big idea shows up, resist the urge to immediately make it sensible. Don’t explain it away before you’ve explored it. Don’t teach it to sit, stay, and behave before it has even had a chance to move.

Let it run.

We’re still wild. There is still mystery ahead of us, more of ourselves to discover, and more life available than we can see from where we’re standing today.

Go find out just how good this can get.

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