The other day, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of making homemade pasta. It’s been something that I’ve wanted to do ever since I traveled to Italy. After borrowing a pasta maker from my In-laws and watching a few YouTube videos (truly the greatest home teacher of our time), I made, and in short order consumed, delicious homemade pasta. The process was so easy and quick that I wondered why I hadn’t done it years ago.

It was the first time I have felt alive and truly successful in a long time. The last year or so have been incredibly difficult for me (and I think many of you can relate). In a society that values positivity, we have all had to force a smile through the most collectively difficult time in the last 50 years. But the pasta brought it all back. It was the spark that reignited my fire.

Dreams are meant to appear big, bold, and perhaps unattainable. In reality, dreams are not too great to achieve, they do not require superpowers, and they are not out of your reach. Dreams DO require courage, they DO require dedication and hard work, and the DO require stretching yourself, but probably not as much as you may think.

The reason it took me so long to make pasta is because I built up a mystique around it. The illusion was that making pasta was a technically intensive process, which took years of practice and knowledge. Only little Italian mamas in the countryside could make pasta and if I wanted to make pasta, I would have to travel to learn from them. Well, maybe my pasta isn’t at that level yet, but at least I ate a bowl of pasta I made myself, and it wasn’t horrible.

That’s the thing about dreams, we want them to come all at once instead of in smaller steps. Either I am at the top of the mountain tomorrow or I am nowhere at all. But what about the first step? What about making it halfway? Are those not equally important steps on the way to realizing your dreams?

The other day I took my first step towards becoming a skillful maker of exquisite homemade pasta, and in the coming weeks, I hope to advance my mastery through delicious practice. What have you always dreamed of doing? How are you advancing your dream(s) today? And what steps are you taking to make them a reality?