Millennials get knocked for having big dreams. As if having goals, plans, and wanting to do something significant with your life is a personality flaw.

Millennials want to live on purpose with purpose.

How’s this a bad thing?

Staying optimistic, even as all the “reality checkers” are telling you “that won’t work”, is something to be commended – not scoffed at.

Yet, there is a problem.

There is something that will keep you from ever seeing those dreams come to fruition.

There is a problem that we need to understand and overcome if we’re going to make our big dreams a reality.

Here is The Problem to Pursuing Our Dreams

Your big dreams aren’t the problem. Your timeline is.

As I first wrote in 101 Secrets For Your Twenties,

“Our big dreams aren’t the problem. Our crazy timeline of how quickly we want those plans and dreams to be sitting on our doorstep with a big Christmas bow is the problem.”

For me personally, I thought the red carpet was going to be rolled out on Day 33 of life in my 20s when God had that penciled in for Day 2,333.

You know, for when I was actually ready for it.

God has His timeline for your life. You have your timeline for your life. Some of the time those match—like on that one Tuesday in February, three years ago. But most of the time they don’t.

We could try and hold tight to the uncontrollable, gripping the details of our lives like a five-year-old trying to walk a rhinoceros.

Or we can let them go and do their thing. We can drop our dreams deep into the ground and water them with creativity, consistency, and patience.

Don’t let your timeline blow up the timeline that needs to happen.

Keep Growing Your Dreams

As I wrote in All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!

“Don’t chase your dreams, grow one. Plant them in good soil and consistently water it. Then trust that God will spark life underground.”

When it’s the right time, we’ll watch our plans and dreams grow bigger, better, and more beautiful than we ever could’ve planned.

Most of the time life will not feel like “it’s supposed to” and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. (click to tweet that)

Keep believing that in the small, daily grind something big is taking place.

And that the big outcome might not look anything like the portrait you painted of success while dreaming at the starting line.

Hold your dreams tight as everything tries to rip them away.

Keep warring for hope as everything feels like it’s warring against you. (click to tweet that)

Sometimes life in your 20s and 30s is about having the courage to write a couple crappy first drafts. Then after 5 re-writes, you start finding the story you need to live.