Someone I admired once told me I was going to win a lot of awards. She meant it as a gift. And for years afterward, every award season that passed without my name in it, some part of me quietly registered it as a shortfall. Even though winning awards had never been my dream to begin with. It was hers, transposed onto me.

This is what happens when other people dream big things for us. On the surface it feels like love. Underneath, it can start to shape a life we never actually chose.

In this solo episode, I draw on Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (by way of an Eddie Izzard one-man show in London) to look at what it does to us when we live inside someone else's vision of who we're supposed to become. I share the story behind that award prediction, and another moment years later when a coach told me to triple my prices and left me paralyzed for six months. Well-meant advice. Real cost.

I also turn the mirror the other way. How easily we do this to the people we love. Projecting our own unfulfilled dreams onto our children, our partners, our clients, our friends. Meaning well, and creating a weight they never asked to carry.

The invitation is to come back to your own center. To trust that you are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. And that the dreams you actually have today, right now, are already enough.

How to Get in Touch:

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