Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a... — Gloria Steinem

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Author: Gloria Steinem

Insight: There's something we do the moment life gets busy or hard: we stop daydreaming. We become practical. We shelve the "what ifs" and focus on the "what is." But that practical turn has a hidden cost. When we stop imagining possibilities, we're not just being realistic—we're actually shrinking our own sense of what could happen. We start living smaller. Steinem's insight here flips how we usually think about dreaming. It's not the opposite of planning; it's the beginning of it. Every person who's changed careers, moved to a new city, or tried something completely new did it because they first let themselves imagine it. That initial vision—sometimes vague, sometimes wild—is what eventually becomes the actual plan. Without it, you're just reacting to whatever comes next. With it, you're at least pointing yourself somewhere. The real gift of keeping your imagination alive is that it makes ordinary life more interesting. It costs nothing to wonder what you'd do if you had more freedom, or what you'd learn if you had time, or who you might become if you tried. That wondering doesn't make you impractical. It makes you the kind of person who actually builds a future instead of just inheriting one.