How to pursue your dreams at any age

Do you want more for your life?

Think it’s too late to follow your dreams or don’t know where to start?

Get seven tips you can use right away to take action towards your dreams today!

Our guest is Kristen Paulson-Nguyen, a writer and editor. An award-winning poet, Kristen got her start in writing at the Boston Globe as a correspondent where she where she wrote dozens of articles on everything from Joanne Chang’s banana bread to the World Series. At 49 she took the leap towards her dream of writing literary nonfiction and started writing a memoir. Kristen is also the writing life editor at Hippocampus magazine and busy mama to an amazing kid. She’s a testament to the skills and hutzpah it takes to follow your dreams! Find her at kristenscarousel.com

Join us for this lively and actionable discussion and take notes so you can join us in pursuing your dreams!

Takeaways:

1. Give voice to your dream. Make sure to talk to your support network beyond your immediate family; colleagues, neighbors, friends, and role models. It’s not necessary to share your inner journey on social media; it’s necessary to identify the key players in your life who can help you move forward in measurable ways towards your dreams. One impactful private conversation can shift your life more than a thousand posts.

2. Be willing to be a beginner! Know that pursuing your dream may mean that you will fail sometimes and just not be a total rockstar right out of the gate. Immediate success is not the goal; learning is! With this growth mindset you an embrace the challenges and failures and know that they are a vital part of your path to happiness and success.

3. Find other people that share similar dreams and who are willing to be students, too. Take a class, join a club, join a chat group online. Start finding your tribe, they are the ones who will give you the courage and support to keep going when times get rough.

4. Find experts in your dream area who are totally rocking it. Hang out with them, attend their lectures, follow them on social media, pay for their time, learn from their success and failures, and know that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel to follow your own dream. Lean on their confidence in you, especially when you’re a beginner.

5. Make sure to let your loved ones know what’s up with your dream project! Communicate with the people who are closest to you. Tell them about your dream; show them why it’s important to you, clarify how it will impact their life both big picture and day-to-day, and let them be in on the dream! Having their daily understanding and support will help sustain you when times get tough.

6. Make time for your dream! Make sure to schedule in time for your passion. Blocking time in your schedule for your dream is one of the most important moves you can make!

7. Master the art of saying NO to that which doesn’t significantly improve your life. When you are asked for a new obligation, simply take some time to reflect before answering. You can always say, “thanks for thinking of me. I’d like to give this a bit of thought to make sure I can be of most help to you. I’ll get back to you by *insert specific date*." And if after reflecting you decide that taking on the project will be a distraction from that which you want to do, you can simply say, “Thanks so much for this opportunity. I have to say no, but I can (recommend another person/send them links to other resources/share other helpful ideas that don’t involve you!). Saying “no” to that which will drain you is saying “yes” to the bigger picture! Know that by saying “no” you are actually amplifying your power to say “YES!” to those things that will really be of significance in the world. Be brave and say no!

If ya dug this, drop a comment below and let us know about your dream! Tell us one action you are gonna take this week and get started on pursuing your dreams!

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Gita: Hello my friends and welcome to the Gita Brown Show, bringing harmony into everyday life. I love creativity and I love wellness and I've been teaching both for 30 years. To be creative it's helpful if you have a lifestyle that supports your wellness because that's where creativity starts. My philosophy is simple and based in yoga tradition. Simple practices done daily over a long period of time will naturally lead you to a lifestyle full of wellness and from there your creativity can flow.

My friends today we are talking about how to make your dream a reality at any age. You can think of today's show like a little mini class and a hangout with friends. I'm going to talk to my friend Kristen, who is a writer and she's going to give you the lowdown and how she made her dream a reality at middle age. We're going to give you about six or maybe even seven tips about how to get started on taking action towards your dream today.

If you tuned in today, it tells me a lot about you, my friend. It tells me that you are the kind of person who wants more for their life. It tells me that you have some little dream that's burning inside of you and you want to let it out but maybe are like a little afraid to try or you think it's too late or you just don't know where to start. We've both been there and we have a lot of answers for you and some ways that you can take action. So please know that you have got this my friend. Kristen was a writer for many, many years. She wrote for the Boston Globe. She was a correspondent, a copywriter, and she was also a magazine editor, but at 49 she decided to make one of her big dreams of writing a memoir become a reality and taking that turn into literary nonfiction took bravery and guts and she did it at middle age.

She's now 52 and she's the writing life editor at Hippocampus magazine and she has degrees in graphic design, French and international affairs. Kristen Paulson-Nguyen, welcome to the Gita Brown Show. And thank you so, so much for being here.

Kristen: Thank you for having me.

Gita: So I want to tell people about how we met my friend. So Kristen and I are dear, dear friends. We actually met because both of us were about middle age, may I say that my dear, and we both applied to a program called the Memoir Incubator, which is a program at Grub Street, which is a center for creative writing in Boston, and we both had to submit large chunks of a manuscript and it was super competitive to get in and we both got into this Incubator program, which was a year-long intensive program where eight of us did a deep dive into craft and writing. And I remember you saying then something about that Memoir Incubator was a gift you were giving yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Kristen: Yes. I figured if I was going to turn 50 I might as well give myself a really big gift. And since this program was several thousand dollars yeah, that was a pricey gift to give myself, but it was the best thing I could have given myself at that time of my life. When I had a young child at home, but I still had my creative dreams and so I had to figure out a way to make those happen because the great thing about growing older is that you realize you have a deadline and then you really realize it when you turn 50, so I was like, you know what, I've got a deadline. I better get going on this.

Gita: Us writers, we love a deadline don't we?

Kristen: It's like We locked that one.

Gita: Which actually is really great for people listening to this because I think there is that someday phenomenon, right? When you have a dream, it's like, Oh I'll do that later. Oh yeah, I'll get to that. I'll get to that later. But suddenly, if you think about it, if you only have so many years to live, are you going to regret not having done that? And I think for both of us, right? We hit that point like, man, if I don't write this book that's burning inside of me, I'm going to regret it a little bit.

Gita: What was it like for you? Because you had been a writer for so many years and these are two very different things for our listeners who are not word nerds like me. Being a columnist and writing for the Globe is very different than writing in a literary fashion, long-form book. So what was that like for you to sort of like be a beginner-ish or be a student all over again at midlife?

Kristen: Well it definitely made me a lot more humble. I felt like I was a decent writer, but the things that I was writing about were not personal at all. And so I was writing about other people, profiles and stories of different, chefs in Boston and things like that. Restaurant reviews, all different things. And so I didn't really have to expose much of myself. And one thing I loved about it as an introvert is that I always just had my reporter's notebook and I could always be an observer. I didn't really have to get my emotions too involved in what I was writing about. I was reporting on other people's lives. And so, in the incubator, the challenge was to write about myself but not just write about my life, but to take my life and to sort of transform it into a story with a very specific meaning. And so that was an interesting challenge and it was almost like I had to start writing all over again from square one because it was so different.

Gita: It's such a big part of going after your dreams, isn't it? It's sometimes like you have to be willing to be a beginner, to be a student and to start over again. And I think so many of us get stuck in the stories of who we are and we just kind of keep trucking along with that story. I'm a this type of writer, I'm a this type of person. I'm a mom. We have these roles for ourselves, right? And then sometimes though making your dream a reality means you got to let some of those roles die or diminish so you can grow into something new. That attitude of being a student is just so important. Did you have stories about yourself that you felt were limiting up to that point? Why did it take so long to write the book?

Kristen: Why did it take so long? I think it wasn't, I had been working on my stories for a long time with a therapist since I was like 26 years old. So I think I had my personal stories in check. But what I didn't have in check was my fear. And I had so much fear of failure. I'd never had, there never been a writer in my family. And that was the first person in my family to finish college. And so I didn't have a legacy of intellectuals to sort of be like, hold my hand and be like, "I'll help you get your book done," or, "I'll help you say it's okay to write." So I had to kind of create that for myself. And I think before I started literary writing, I was literally too petrified to submit my work cause I was too afraid to fail because I loved writing so much that I felt like if I failed, I literally wouldn't survive because I loved it so much.

Kristen: So I was too afraid to risk failure until I entered the Incubator, actually until I applied for the Incubator. And in fact, when I first applied, I did fail. I was told that I didn't get in and it was disappointing. But then a few days later I got a note saying I did get in. I guess someone must have jumped off the waitlist or someone must have dropped out of the program. And so I've got a spot after all. So I guess it was meant to be.

Gita: I'm so glad it was meant to be because then we're talking here today, woot! Man, that fear of failure gets in the way, doesn't it? And it's such a huge part of the creative process because we are going to fail. We're just going to suck at what we do. Especially if you're going after a dream that's new for you or you're sort of a shape-shifting, like you did, from like one style of writing to another. And I wish that something, I know you and I have talked about, back in my twenties that I had understood that that fear of failure is part of the process. That it's not something to be gotten rid of. And then you do the thing. It's just something to acknowledge that you feel and you just do it anyway, right?

Kristen: You absolutely do it anyway. And I also have to say that in the beginning before I developed a lot of confidence about my literary writing, I had to kind of borrow from other people's egos. In other words maybe inside I did think I sucked a little and I was going to fail, but I began, and then when other people outside of me told me, sort of, they gave me a reality check. You know what? You can do this, you got this. And I think having some mentors like Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, the instructor in the program, really helped me see that maybe there was a different vision for me. Maybe I wasn't as much of a failure as I thought I might be. And so, in the beginning I definitely leaned on them to sort of keep telling me that to sort of get me through the beginning stages until I could feel like I'm good enough about my own work and confident enough to keep going and keep pushing.

Gita: Man, that is so huge what you just said. It just kind of unlocked something in me because I think so often we just need that one person to see that future vision of ourselves and to tell us that they see in us and then that gives us a little traction while we are sucking out loud at the new thing we're trying until we can kind of live towards that vision. And I think that if you don't seek out and find those people for yourself, it's quite possible that your dream will never become a reality. And it's so crucial to find that community and that support.

I know it's kind of touches on another thing, which is that when you're chasing a new dream or you're living towards that new dream and sometimes there are people in your life that might fall away, right? Because it's like they no longer serve you or they're not willing to see you in that future self or they're not willing to support that dream. So you have to find those people that are visioning the best self of you moving forward, who can help you do that. Did you feel like you lost, not lost friends, but sort of changed people that you're hanging out with while you were working towards your dream?

Kristen: I think I refocused. I mean I just want to say quickly something about failure, which is that I think it's really noble to fail because when you fail, you've put out your honest dream and you've put it out there with all your vulnerability and all your humanity. And so if you fail, it's not really a bad thing because you've had the courage to put it all out there. So I don't know I feel like failure is kind of noble and I think that in American culture we kind of forget that failing is kind of awesome because it means that you put your blood and guts and you went for the glory and maybe you didn't get it, but maybe you'll just keep trying.

Gita: I'm writing this down, failing is awesome, yes!

Kristen: I mean it's noble because imagine not trying instead and how tragic that would be. So in terms of people in my life, I think it was more just refocusing. I think that I really woke up when I joined the Incubator because I had never really shown who I actually was inside to the public because it was really scary to really be an artist or really be a literary writer. It scared the heck out of me to be that vulnerable, to put all of my failings and my stories out there for the public. But the most amazing thing that happened is, it was when I put that self out there that felt so tattered that that's when I attracted the friends that I had the most in common with. The friends that wanted to go after their dreams, the friends that weren't afraid to look within themselves for all of their stories, not just the ones that were pretty and glossy and tied with a rainbow, but the stories that were difficult and hard to tell. And that's how I found my tribe. So I don't regret it.

Gita: Wow, this is amazing. I got like 50 hashtags out of what you just said. It's noble to fail. Failing is awesome. And that's why we love being writers to sidebar because we can always rewrite, right? Until we hit submit, we got a little to edit, edit, edit, edit. Revision rocks. So you found you did a couple of key things is that you started to voice what you wanted. You started to find your community and especially find teachers who were farther ahead on the track that you were, which is like so crucial. It's like find someone who's awesome at the thing you want to do and just hang out with them as much as you possibly can. But what about your family and letting people around you know about your dreams? Is that something you had to do at some point to sort of say, "Hey, by the way, you're going to see this new behavior from me and here's what it means?"

Kristen: Well, I mostly only had to let my husband and daughter know. I have a nine- year-old daughter who's amazing, Lily, and my husband, because my family of origin actually they were never really part of my literary dream. I was always the one in the family who like went to art school and was doing something creative. So they kind of supported me, but from a distance. I always have known that they love me, but they weren't really that involved in my creative dreams. So they kind of would have supported whatever I was doing. So I didn't really have to talk to them. But I basically just talked to my husband and didn't really have a conversation so much as a statement when I was 49, and I basically just said, "You know what, there's something I really need to do. I need to write this book and I know it's not going to be easy. And I know you might not even agree about what's in the book, but it's something I need to do for myself so I'm going to do it."

Kristen: And I basically didn't even allow for him to be, but he didn't. He didn't protest. He's been along on the journey and actually pretty good-natured about it. But he knows me. When he married me, he knew that I was the kind of person that once I got my teeth into something I wasn't going to back down. So he's able to deal with that part of me that's just kind of like, you know what? No, not changing my mind.

Gita: It's so funny because I think sometimes we don't ever stop to have those conversations with the people we love. We have that dream inside of us and we might start doing stuff, but we don't go, "Hey guys, by the way, I'm writing this thing and in whatever way," you just have your wonderful blunt, loving way, "Hey, I'm writing this, get over it." But whatever way we've got to communicate with the people who are closest to us in our lives. This is my dream, this is what it's going to entail so that they can kind of be in on it with us. A lot of times we just, we don't even voice it to those people who are closest to us. It's so important. And you touched on something else too, it's going to take time and all of that, that is such a huge barrier for so many people.

So many of my yoga students, my clarinet students, they're like, "But I have a full-time job," or I have this or I have that or your case you, I have a husband, I have a daughter household to manage. It's like all these excuses and there's something really powerful that you and I have talked about making time for your dream. You know at first you might have to wedge it in, but there's that really crucial skill that I think you have developed. And I know I'm working on. On saying no to everything that doesn't matter. Actually, can you tell people a little bit about your whole thing about there's writing and then there's admin. I think they would love that analogy.

Kristen: Exactly. So, I've done a couple things. So one of the things I've done is I've had to divide life into only two buckets. So my life consists of writing and admin. So there's writing and then literally everything else is admin. Taking care of my daughter, hanging out with my husband, family events, like everything else is admin. And it kind of keeps it right-sized. Obviously, I'm going to be there for my family and important things, but it keeps the focus on the writing. And the second thing I've done, which has been super helpful, is I realized that I was not very good at saying no. So I wasn't really protecting my writing time as much as I could be. So I got a life coach and we got this "No" button.

No button: No.

Kristen: So the "No" button is helping me to say no and I'm getting coached and I'm learning to say no. So now I have more time for my writing. So I've said no to a number of things. It's also taught me when someone asks me about something to take time to reflect before I say yes or no. It's just I didn't grow up in a have a childhood with a ton of boundaries. So I didn't really say no that much. So as an adult I really had to learn to say no, to invest in myself and invest in my creative and writing time. And it's funny because the more I say no the more the people around me are getting better at saying no. So I think it's sort of rubbing off on people.

Gita: Oh I love that, cool, side effect. It's so important. Especially something like writing. I think for creative endeavors, especially if it's not earning money right away for you. It's a tough one, right? Because for me, I had to start scheduling it in my calendar, it's a legit appointment. It'll be a nine to 12 on Wednesday I'm writing and if someone asked me, can you do this thing or that thing or teach this person, the answer is, I hit that "No" button. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But protecting your time and actually scheduling in your dream is the only way it's going to get done. Otherwise, life bleeds around the edges. Like you said, it's all just admin and you end up running around at the end of the day you're like, but I didn't even write a single page of anything and that's sad.

Kristen: That's really sad. Then that little voice that wants to write a book can't do it. That's sad.

Gita: Yes. Can we talk about sucking for a minute? It was a lot of going after your dream is like embracing the process, particularly with something like writing a book or you have a larger vision. Like I don't know, creating a show like the Gita Brown Show, like you're not going to be awesome at it right off the bat. It's, you were talking the other day about you have to really love what you're doing so much that you don't actually care about the end result. If you get published or not. You just have to love it so much that you would do it no matter what. And I think that kind of gets you, keeps you going for your dream. Well does that resonate with you in terms of, I don't know, say writing a book at all because both are working on our manuscripts for a long time, we don't know if they're going to be published or not, right? We don't know.

Kristen: We don't know. But who cares about the outcome? I think the thing I focus on is that I'm the luckiest person in the world because I get to do what I love. And it's not going to be like this forever. At some point, the books going to be done and it's going to get published. And so I think I just try to roll with the process and the joy of the process, but also the ups and downs. Because when you take a deep dive in memoir, it can really awaken some things from your past that are very difficult and hard and sad and difficult to deal with. So I try to remember that as I go when I do sink into disappointment when a writing or a difficult life event, I try to remember the big picture that I'm on this journey and I've got, I've got to keep going.

And then this is just a temporary thing that's happening. But I do think you also have to embrace the process. And so some ways I've done that as like I go to literary readings, I cheer on other writers all the time on social media, at literary readings, I buy their books, I get them signed with goopy messages. All these things keep kind of filling my well and keep me excited and keep me going as a writer. And I ask questions at readings.

I just recently found out that Leslie Jamison hates pitching and I was cheering out loud. I was like, "Oh my God, she hates pitching." She doesn't like to send a pitch. And the reason she doesn't like to pitch is that she's how can I pitch when I don't know what I'm going to write until I sit down and write it? And I was like, amen. She doesn't know like thank God and so I could relate to that. And so that's kind of the fuel that keeps me going is these conversations and interactions with my community. Keeps me hopeful. It keeps me happy. It keeps me upbeat and moving forward.

Gita: Oh, I love that because chasing a dream, any dream you have at all, at times can be very lonely, right? Like it's inside of you and you have this vision of this future self. But if you're not tying it to other people who are actively chasing their vision and then I love this, what you're saying about finding people who have already accomplished what you're looking to accomplish. It's like this traction, right? It helps pull you forward. I think that's so important.

So if I were to sum up all the cool shit that you said today, excuse the S-H-I-T, but that's how we roll. Number one, it's find your "No" button, decide what's important to you and make sure you're making time for that and everything else gets that hard "No," not doing it. Hit me that no button again. Let's hear it one more time.

Kristen: All right, let's hear it.

Speaker 3: No, no, no, no.

Gita: I love it. Number two, you said, have this attitude of being a student is what? I heard you saying a lot, right? Take classes, even going to literary readings or just hanging out with people who are already accomplished and what you're doing is a way of being a student and showing up and being humble about it.

What else did you say? You said to, Oh, community support. You got to find your tribe. Find people who love what you love because their enthusiasm will keep you going. What else did you say? You said a lot of stuff you said-

Kristen: Remember-

Gita: Oh yeah, go ahead.

Kristen: Remember the big picture that you are going to have setbacks and you might some days even feel depressed and weepy because you're digging up old material that isn't easy. We don't write memoirs because they're easy. We write them to make meaning out of difficult things that have happened to us and to discover new things about them. But that doesn't mean that going back into a difficult event, like someone's death, is going to be kind of a fun thing to do. So give yourself a break but know that you're going to get back on it and you're going to finish the job.

Gita: Awesome. I love it. So it's like embrace the process with all and understand that that failing is part of the process.

Kristen: Right.

Gita: You, oh let your family in on your dreams. Tell them, or your support people, tell them what you are trying to do and ask them to support you in whatever way that is. What else did we say? We said attitude of being a student. And then also I think it's important is to kind of leave your own personal story behind. We have all these roles we put ourselves in, right? Like I'm a this, I'm a that you could have easily said, Oh, I've written for the Boston Globe, I'm an editor, that's who I am. I could never write literary nonfiction, but you are willing to sort of like let that identity go in order to let the new one emerge. So sometimes leaving bits of your identity or story behind is a little bit of shape-shifting. That's painful but totally worth it.

What else did I miss anything? Is there anything else you would want to add? Like say someone was listening right now and they're just like, Oh, I want to follow my dream but I'm scared. What would you tell them?

Kristen: I guess would just say just take the leap because the fear is only temporary but if you really love something, it's going to last your whole life. And so don't ignore it. And I was joking with Gita yesterday that there was this little voice, but there was this little voice and it was like, "I think I want to write a book. But yeah, I don't really want to tell anybody," it was like this. And so it was hard to nurture that voice in the beginning. But I'd say just go for it because we've got a deadline, we got a real human deadline and we got to just take the leap and go for it. And we're not going to be perfect.

Kristen: Look at all the amazing things that have happened to me already along the way. I got a job as an editor, I met Gita Brown and a bunch of amazing community members. I know published authors now that are super successful and I have fun every day with what I do and I really have joy in what I do even though some of the days are hard. So I got so much out of following my dream, I got other benefits that I didn't think that I was going to have.

Gita: Oh it's so fantastic. I literally have jotted down I think 15 different things you said here that I'm like those are going on quote cards right away. Like fear is temporary, but that joy of doing what you love lasts forever. And just to sort of wrap up here, I love this notion that we are on a deadline as humans, we're born and then we die. So we better be careful about what we do in the middle.

So as I head towards wrapping this up, I want to challenge anyone who is listening or viewing this right now to hop over to gitabrown.com right underneath this show you can drop a comment, tell us what your dream is. If you're too like, "I don't want to say it quite yet." Tell us one thing that you're going to do this week and to take action towards that dream.

Even if it's just like I'm going to have coffee with a friend and mention it to her or him and schedule it in your calendar. I think that's so crucial that even scheduling to talk to a potential person who might kind of be willing to be supportive is a huge step forward. So hop on over to gitabrown.com drop a comment, schedule it. Take one little action in the directions of your dreams, because again, if you guys listen to Kristen and I talked today, you chose this episode, you saw that title, and you hit that play because there's some little dream in you that's asking to be born.

And Kristen and I, I know we both want to see that dream come into reality and share in that joy, right?

Kristen: Absolutely.

Gita: All right? So we know they can do it. We've got their back and to kind of seal everything we talked about today, I'm going to do a little chant for peace. This is a chance that was taught to me by my teachers in the Integral yoga tradition. It's a chant for peace. I'll do it in the original Sanskrit and then I'll give the English translation afterward. So we raise that vibration to a little happiness, a little love, a little possibility.

Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu That means may the entire world. You my friend, listening and beautiful Kristen, be filled with peace and joy, love and light.

Kristen, thank you so much for being part of this conversation today. I'm sure you inspired a lot of people.

Kristen: Thank you.

Gita: Yay.

Kristen: It was my privilege to be here.

Gita: Yeah, I'm so happy. So guys, share this with your friends. Hop over to gitabrown.com, leave us a comment. Kristen and I will be cheering for you and go get your dreams. Have a beautiful day. My friends. Peace to you.