What happens when you stop believing your life can be different?
That question sits at the heart of How to Dream, but it also sits at the very heart of Make A Way Media.
When people hear the word “dream,” they often think about big goals: writing a book, starting a business, changing careers, traveling the world, buying a home, or finally doing the thing they have talked about doing for years. Dreams can certainly look like those things. But dreaming is much more fundamental than making a wish list for your life. Dreaming requires us to believe that something we cannot see yet might still be possible.
That is why dreaming is so closely connected to hope.
Dreaming Is Not Just About Following Your Dreams
I wrote How to Dream for people who want something different for their lives but may not know how to get there. It is for people who have been discouraged, distracted, overwhelmed, disappointed, or so busy surviving that they have stopped asking themselves what they actually want.
The work of dreaming begins long before we make a vision board or write down a goal. We have to learn how to tune out the noise. We have to recognize the beliefs we have inherited from other people and decide whether we still want to carry those beliefs inside our brains. We have to notice the ways fear, comparison, perfectionism, self-doubt, and past disappointments influence the decisions we make today.
We also have to learn to think differently.
A growth mindset allows us to see ourselves as people who can learn, change, improve, and begin again. It gives us permission to stop treating where we are today as evidence of where we will always be. We can acknowledge what is difficult without deciding that difficulty means something is impossible.
You don’t have to feel ready. You just need to want something different.
Sometimes that is where a dream begins.
First, We Have to Get Our Minds Ready
One of the biggest misconceptions about dreaming is that people fail to pursue their dreams simply because they lack motivation. Often, the obstacle is much more complicated. Our minds are filled with messages about what is realistic, what someone our age should be doing, what people like us are capable of, whether we have waited too long, whether we are talented enough, whether we can afford to fail, and what everyone else might think if we try.
That is why How to Dream isn’t simply a book about following your dreams. It is about getting your mind ready for the life you want to build.
It asks readers to examine the thoughts that may be keeping them stuck, reconnect with their own desires, develop a growth mindset, protect their hope, and begin taking meaningful steps forward. Dreaming isn’t pretending obstacles don’t exist. It is learning not to automatically interpret an obstacle as a stop sign.
The Workbook That Turns Reflection Into Practice
Knowing something intellectually and practicing it in your own life are two different things. That is why the How to Dream Workbook exists alongside the book.
The workbook takes the ideas in How to Dream off the page and places them directly into the reader’s hands. Through therapeutic exercises, reflection prompts, creative activities, and practical planning tools, readers are invited to examine their thinking, identify limiting beliefs, explore what they really want, build confidence and self-trust, manage stress, solve problems creatively, and break larger dreams into smaller, achievable steps.
The goal is not to create the perfect plan for the perfect life. The goal is movement. Or as I like to say: to get your dreams in motion.
You may not know exactly where you are going yet. You may not know how everything will work. You may still be afraid. You can still take one small step toward something you want.
Then another.
Over time, those steps can become a life. The life that some small voice inside of you whispers belongs to you.
And Then How to Dream Became a Conversation
The How to Dream podcast grew from the same belief that inspired the book and workbook: people need places where hope can be practiced.
There is something different about hearing another human voice when life feels heavy. The podcast allows us to have conversations that a book alone cannot always have. We can talk about what happens when you are tired. What happens when you are disappointed. What happens when everyone around you seems to be moving forward and you feel like you are standing still. We can talk about fear, comparison, courage, regret, uncertainty, starting over, and what it means to continue building a life when you cannot yet see how the story turns out.
Most importantly, we can talk about what to do next.
How to Dream was never intended to offer empty encouragement or insist that everything will work out exactly the way we want. Hope is more substantial than that. Sometimes hope is simply the belief that the story is not finished yet.
Why Dreaming Belongs at Make A Way Media
Make A Way Media began with books, but the purpose behind those books has always been bigger than publishing.
We believe stories can help people see themselves differently. We believe representation can expand a child’s understanding of who gets to be the hero. We believe books can teach empathy by allowing us to experience a life different from our own. We believe children can learn the language of peace, recognize love in ordinary places, develop coping skills, understand gratitude, and discover that they have something meaningful to contribute to the world.
At every age, we need stories that expand our understanding of what is possible.
That is dreaming.
A child who sees someone who looks like them saving Christmas is being invited to imagine themselves as capable, trustworthy, generous, and needed. A child learning to find calm during a difficult moment is discovering that they have tools within themselves. A reader encountering someone else’s experience is being asked to imagine the world through another person’s eyes. An adult who has spent years caring for everyone else may finally begin asking, “What do I want my life to look like?”
These may seem like different kinds of stories, but they are connected by the same fundamental idea: our current circumstances do not have to be the limits of our imagination.
Hope Needs Imagination
There is a reason despair makes dreaming difficult. Despair tells us there is no point. Nothing will change. Nothing we do will make a difference. We should stop expecting anything better so we won’t be disappointed again. Dreaming pushes against that conclusion. Dreaming says there may still be another way.
That doesn’t mean that we learn to ignore reality. It means refusing to believe that the reality we see today is the only reality that can ever exist.
Hope needs imagination! We cannot work toward a kinder community if we cannot imagine one. We cannot create more equitable opportunities for children if we accept inequity as inevitable. We cannot build more meaningful lives if we have stopped allowing ourselves to wonder what those lives might look like.
Before we can make a way, we have to believe there might be one.
This Is the Work
At Make A Way Media, we want people to read. We want children to see themselves in books. We want families to have meaningful conversations. We want people to develop empathy for experiences different from their own. We want people to have tools for their mental and emotional well-being. We want people to feel less alone.
And we want people to hope. Not passive hope. Not wishful thinking. Not the kind of hope that asks us to sit still and wait for something good to happen. We believe in hope that moves.
The kind that asks a question. Reads a book. Changes a thought. Starts a conversation. Applies for something. Creates something. Helps someone. Tries again. Takes one small step toward a life, family, community, or world that does not exist yet.
That is why How to Dream is more than the title of a book, workbook, or podcast for us. It is part of the philosophy behind Make A Way Media. We tell stories that help people see beyond what is. We create tools that help people imagine what could be. And then, whenever we can, we help them take the next step toward making it real.
You don’t have to feel ready. You just need to want something different.
And that alone is enough to begin.
Thank you so much for being here with me,
Founder of Make A Way Media