I've carried dreams in my mind like precious stones—carefully polished, admired in quiet moments, kept safe from the harsh light of day. But lately, I've been asking myself a troubling question: If these dreams matter so much to me, why do they remain only in my mind?
We tell ourselves stories about who we are and what we want. I want to write more. I want to deepen my relationships. I want to live with more intention. These statements feel true when we think them. They comfort us. But somewhere between intention and action, something breaks down. We avoid the very things we claim to want most, and in that avoidance, we reveal a difficult truth: what we say we want and what we actually prioritize are often worlds apart.
Actions are the only true indicator of life priorities. Not our thoughts, not our wishes, not the vision boards we create or the goals we set each January. Our days are finite containers, and how we fill them tells the truth about what matters to us. If I say writing is important but never open the page, if I claim relationships are precious but never pick up the phone, then my life is speaking a different language than my mind.
This realization can feel harsh, even judgmental. But I've come to see it as strangely liberating. Our minds are brilliant at self-deception. They can trick us into believing we are acting in the same way we're thinking. We can spend years mentally rehearsing a conversation, planning a project, imagining a transformed life—and mistake that mental activity for actual movement. The mind creates a simulation so vivid that we feel we've already done the work.
But belief needs to be worked out through action. Like a muscle that atrophies without use, a priority that lives only in our thoughts grows weaker over time. The longer a believed priority stays in our mind without expression, the lower it actually ranks in reality. It becomes a ghost of what we once hoped for, haunting us with its unfulfilled promise.
I think this is where confidence comes from—not from positive thinking or affirmations, but from the messy, imperfect process of working out our life priorities in the real world. Confidence emerges through both success and failure. It's forged in the moments when we try and stumble, when we succeed and surprise ourselves, when we learn what works and what doesn't through direct experience rather than endless speculation.
But success and failures cannot be avoided—not if we want to grow, not if we want our lives to reflect our deepest values. Avoidance is simply choosing to leave a life priority in our mind, where it's safe but sterile, protected but powerless. It's the belief that we can arrive at a destination without taking the journey, that we can reap a harvest without planting seeds.
I used to think avoidance was about fear of failure. And sometimes it is. But I've learned it can also be fear of success, fear of change, fear of discovering who we actually are rather than who we imagine ourselves to be. Avoidance lets us stay comfortable with our self-image while never testing it against reality.
Reality demands action. It's not cruel in this demand—it's simply honest. Reality is the cure for avoidance because it forces us out of the endless loop of thinking, planning, and imagining. It asks us to show up, to be present, to engage with life as it actually is rather than how we wish it to be.
So I'm learning to pay attention to the gap between my words and my days. When I notice myself saying "I should" or "I want to" for the tenth time about the same thing, I try to pause. I ask myself: Do I actually want this, or do I just like the idea of wanting it? And if I do want it, what is one small action I can take today?
Because in the end, the life we live is the only one that counts. Not the life we plan to live someday, not the person we think we should be, but the choices we make when no one is watching, the moments we show up even when it's hard. That's where our true priorities live—not in the temple of our thoughts, but in the humble, holy ground of our daily actions.