There are many reasons that people don’t follow their dreams. Most of them have a single underlying theme: fear.  Please don’t misunderstand me: I don’t mean the kind of fear that you can conquer “by just doing it.” Our deepest fears, I’ve learned, don’t work that way. Often, that fear comes from survival: at some point in our lives, someone told us that we could not survive unless we followed a certain set of rules. If you’re told that you shouldn’t walk alone at night because of the danger, you will start to become more alert and anxious when you find yourself walking alone, whether or not you’ve ever had a bad experience in the dark. It’s the same with dreams. If someone told you at the right time of your life that trying to live in a way that is not endorsed by mainstream society is dangerous and could affect your chances of survival, the same thing happened: you began to fear that option.

While it’s not true for everyone, I know it is at least true for me. And I’ve realized that the way out of this fear has nothing to do with “just barreling through it,” or forcing myself into fearful situations. Instead, it is all about incremental changes that happen five minutes at a time, and about proving to myself at a pace with which I’m comfortable that the myths I have learned are just that: myths. Here are the five myths about making your dream a reality that have applied most to me:

1)   I don’t have the time.

Do you have kids? Did you think you were busy before kids? Were you amazed that you found a way to make more time to do all the things you did before you had kids AND still be a parent? My point is that time is relative. Although it seems an infinitesimally small amount, what would five minutes focused on your dream accomplish? Half a page about starting your own business read in a book; a five-minute sketch on a napkin to start a portfolio; five minutes to try and create a rhyming couplet poem. Those five minutes add up. If you spent five minutes a day five days a week for a year, you would have spent 21.75 hours a year on your dream. That’s almost 22 hours above zero.

2)   I’ll never make any money.

Who says? Really, every time that you hear yourself say this, turn right around and ask yourself: who says this? Who told me this was true? At first, you’ll come up with quite a list of people who are not making money with their dream. At that point, it is your job to then go back over the list and ask this question: “How many of these people care that they aren’t making more money? Are they suffering for their dream?” The next step is to perhaps take those five minutes a day that you’ve afforded yourself and do some research, either online or surveying other people, and find some examples of people who HAVE made money following their dream. Keep doing this until the list of dreamers who have succeeded by your standards – because that’s really what this is all about – your impression of their success – is longer than the list you have of people who haven’t.

3)   Dreams are only for other people.

Again, who says? Others with debt have followed their dreams; others with kids have done so. Others who have very similar circumstances to yours have followed their dreams. Instead of focusing on how they did and you didn’t, however – because ultimately, that could make you feel worse – ask yourself this: Why do I think I can’t follow my dream? What is stopping me? Whose opinion is stopping me? What fear is stopping me? Take some time to think about these things and write them down. You might be surprised to see what comes up.

4)   It’s hard.

One of Western Culture’s biggest and most pervasive myths is that we have to work hard for our money. It’s just not true. Not everyone works hard for their money. In fact, – brace yourself – a lot of people get paid for what they consider play. If that last sentence caused your stomach to flip flop or created an anxious ache in your chest, you may hold the belief that work – making money – must be hard. Ask yourself this: what if it didn’t have to be?

5)   It’s easy.

On the opposite side of the spectrum of “making money is hard” is the thought that “If I want to follow my dream, why aren’t I finding it to be an easy task?” In my experience, the answer is fear.

The most freeing and authentic things I’ve done in my life have scared the ever-living shit out of me when I started them. When I pushed “send” on an email asking local retailers if they would carry the recipe book I had just published, I burst into tears and was sure I was about to die. When I decided to move to Panama to write a book, I had a huge knot in my stomach from when I booked the ticket to after I arrived. If fear is the most pervasive reason that you are not following your dream, it’s ok to acknowledge that moving forward is not easy. It is ok to surround yourself with people who get this, acknowledge your courage, support your decision, and know that waffling is a necessary part of the process to ensure you feel safe as you do so. It’s also ok to move forward anyway.