Want Your Dreams More Than Your Drama

I was reading one of my favorite authors the other night—Jen Sincero, whose sharp, witty insight has a way of pulling no punches—and one line stopped me in my tracks. “You have to want your dreams more than you want your drama.” It was the kind of sentence that doesn’t ask to be remembered—it insists on it.

I let it land for a moment. And then I let it linger.

Because here’s the thing: we do love our drama.

It’s easy to think of drama as something external—chaotic relationships, high-emotion conversations, or the latest mess in the news cycle. But often, our most persistent drama is internal. It lives in our thoughts, our stories, and our limiting beliefs. We carry it quietly—drama around money, around time, around our health, our families, our abilities, our worthiness. It becomes the soundtrack in the background of our lives, so familiar we stop noticing how often it’s playing.

We don’t just live with our drama. We nurture it. We rehearse it. We explain it to ourselves and others. We use it to justify why something isn’t possible, or why we’ve stopped trying. Over time, it stops feeling like drama and starts to feel like identity. Like truth. Like the unchangeable reality of our lives.

But that’s where we need to pause.

Because drama may feel real, but it’s not the same as truth. In fact, most of it is simply a story—one we’ve told ourselves so often, in so many ways, that we’ve forgotten we ever had a choice to tell it differently.

Maybe that story says you’ll never have enough time. Or that you’re too far behind to start something new. Maybe it says your health limits you, or that your dreams are too big, too risky, too much. Whatever it is, it’s a script. And you’ve been cast in it not because it’s the best version of your life, but because it’s the one that’s most familiar.

But what if you stopped buying into that script?

What if, instead of perfecting your drama, you let it fall apart?

What if you gave yourself permission to want more—without apology, without guilt, and without waiting for everything to be perfectly lined up?

That’s where the power lives.

There is no denying that life can be difficult. There are moments that knock us down, circumstances that stretch us to the edge, and wounds that take time to heal. But the invitation is not to ignore those realities. It’s to not let them define the boundaries of your future.

Dreams require courage. They require imagination. And most of all, they require clarity—a clarity that says, “I want this more than I want to stay stuck in what’s always been.” That kind of clarity often starts with letting go of the very drama that has given us something to cling to.

It’s strange how comfortable we can become with stories that hurt us. There’s a sense of control in repeating familiar narratives. Even when they limit us, they’re known. Predictable. Safe. But dreams don’t grow in safety. They grow in boldness, in risk, in the willingness to step into the unknown and trust that the new story you’re writing will be worth telling.

Choosing the dream means being willing to walk away from the part of you that finds identity in the struggle. It means being more committed to the future you want than the past you’ve survived. It means looking at the excuses and the fears and saying, “You’ve had your turn. Now it’s mine.”

This doesn’t mean pretending fear doesn’t exist. It means not giving it the final say. You can feel uncertain and still move forward. You can carry doubt and still act in faith. Dreams don’t ask for perfection. They ask for presence. For willingness. For one brave step toward the version of life that lights you up from the inside.

So if you’re waiting for the right moment to begin, stop waiting. If you’ve been holding back until things make more sense, let go. If you’ve been clinging to a story that tells you you’re not ready, not enough, or not capable—consider this your invitation to write a different ending.

The dream you carry inside you is not random. It’s not a distraction. It’s not something you’ll “get to someday.” It’s calling you because it belongs to you. And what’s waiting on the other side is likely bigger and better than your fear has led you to believe.

You don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to want it more than the drama that’s kept you playing small.

So today, choose the dream.
Live into it.
Speak it aloud.
Move toward it with whatever steps you can take.

Not because it’s guaranteed—but because it’s yours.

About the Author