Most of my life I wished for more. I wish I had focused on less.

For a long time, whenever I had one of those dejected and down sort of days where you want to curl up into a ball, I would pull out a fresh, crisp 12″x18″ sheet of paper and write out my financial projections for the next five years.

But these were no ordinary projections.

Equal parts delusion and fantasy, grazed only ever so slightly by the constraints of reality, it’s not so much that I couldn’t achieve them, as much as the fact that I knew deep down, I wouldn’t. And I suppose it didn’t really matter a whole lot to me at the time. I just wanted enough to get the blood pumping.

What I didn’t see at the time was I was trying to kick start a car that was basically out of gas. The thrill of the future was enough to keep me running on fumes a few days. Sometimes even a few weeks, but inevitably, I’d always find myself back on empty as the wish fulfillment faded and reality returned.

Wishes are easy, but it’s the dreams we need. Wishes are the things we want without doing the work. In fact, in the face of a wish, work is nothing more than a meaningless barrier. Dreams, on the other hand, manifest our greater purpose. They’re the thing we’re put on this planet to do, and for dreams, doing the work is part of their fulfillment.

Not to say that there’s anything wrong with having a day where you need to pull out the carrot and put it in front of a stick, but at a certain point, it can become more work to keep finding new carrots than just to do the work itself.

Emil Ebers said, “Fame to the ambitious, is like salt water to the thirsty. The more one gets, the more he wants.” And that’s the real danger. Whether it’s fame, fortune, or pleasure, the wish is an addiction.

As has been recounted in innumerable gangster movies, the problem is life sticks to you like the residue you find when you peel off old tape. Not quite there, never quite gone, what you do becomes part of who you are. We are creatures of habit, and we love as we do as much as we do as we love. Every action you take will attach you just the smallest bit more either to the wish or the dream.

But we live in a slash and burn world that trades on the future for the now, and the jagged little pill here is that as much as we can understand the need for the work and the importance of the dream, we can’t generate the passion for it through intellect alone.

We can start, though, by recognizing the dream. By asking ourselves who we want to be. Because the thing that makes the dream happen isn’t the reward or the payoff, and the thing that stands in the way isn’t the work.

In fact, no dream is worth having if you don’t love the work. Not to say that the victor shouldn’t enjoy the spoils, but that you have to love the work even more. You have to be willing to live your life forever the beginner, always open, and always eager to know more, even at the sacrifice of showing more. This builds the dream.

And while we can’t simply will our way to passion, we can see where we stand and create a different world around us, placing ourselves in environments of growth. We can create situations that hold us accountable. We can spend time with those who hold us to higher standards. We can start new adventures, stop doing the same old things, and build new habits for ourselves.

In Chinese culture, it’s said you have to go past boredom to find fascination. Which is to say you have to make it through the hard before you get to the good. And it’s also to say that the wonder is inside of you. Not in projections or spreadsheets or money or fame. But in choosing yourself and the power you have over the sway of the temptation. And if you work towards the dream, doing it over and over again, pretty soon you’ll find that living it doesn’t take nearly as much as it seemed.

Be sure to share the things you do to keep yourself going in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.