Some dreams were handed to you at the dinner table. Check the label before you spend ten years chasing one.

Some ambitions are inherited rather than chosen, absorbed young from what the people around you admired or regretted. They feel identical to your own from the inside, which is the difficulty, and they can carry you a long way before you notice the direction was set by somebody else. Recognising the source does not automatically mean abandoning the goal.

Ask where each of your big aims first came from. If a particular person appears in the answer, look harder before committing more years. Keeping it is fine, as long as you are the one keeping it.