There Is a Version of You That Would Be Ashamed of How Little You Bet on Yourself

I have a journal entry from years ago. I found it while clearing out old things and sat with it for longer than i expected. In it i had written a list of things i wanted to do, things that felt enormous and almost embarrassing to put down in writing even privately. Dreams that my waking practical self had been carefully talking me out of for years.

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Reading it, the main thing i felt was not inspiration. It was something closer to grief for all the time between that entry and where i was sitting reading it, time during which i had talked myself out of more than i had talked myself into.

The version of me that wrote that list would not have understood the caution. Would not have recognised the careful practical person i had become as someone who was being wise rather than afraid.

I think most of us have that version somewhere. The earlier self who had not yet accumulated enough rejection or failure or disappointment to start building protective walls around the wanting. Who had not yet learned to dress fear as practicality. Who still believed without needing proof first that they were allowed to want big things and pursue them without apologising for the audacity.

Somewhere in growing up a lot of people lose contact with that version of themselves and replace it with someone more manageable. More reasonable. Less likely to be embarrassed by failure because they stopped aiming at things embarrassing enough to fail at.

I am not saying recklessness is wisdom. But i am saying there is a difference between thoughtful strategy and slowly learning to want less so losing hurts less. One is building something. The other is just protecting yourself from your own life.

Bet on yourself. Not blindly. Not without thought. But actually bet. The version of you that wrote those early lists was not naive.

They just had not learned to be afraid yet.

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