You didn’t give up the dream. You updated it with better information. That’s different.

Changing what you want in the light of better information is not surrender. It only looks like it from outside, where the change of direction is visible and the reasoning is not. Holding a plan you formed before you knew anything is loyalty to an earlier version of yourself, not to the thing you actually cared about.

Ask what the original goal was really for. Often the underlying want is still intact and only the route has changed. Say the new version out loud, plainly, so it stops feeling like something you are apologising for.