When you were younger, you thought you could do almost anything.

You imagined not just becoming a doctor, but curing cancer.  You didn’t just day-dream about starting a business, but creating inventions that solved big problems.  You didn’t just see yourself as a poet, but the bard who reignited modern culture’s interest in verse.  (Okay, maybe that last one was just me.)

Over time, you reset your expectations of the possible.  Why?

First, friends and family urged you to be “realistic.”  Then the self-doubt crept in.  You became more cautious while also raising your standards.

After all, if you’re going to do something amazing, you have to be amazing, don’t you?

Finally, you realized the whole thing was taking a lot longer than you’d thought it would.  You were tired and your motivation was quickly sapping.

Finally you told yourself: who needs those silly dreams anyway?

When I put together the self-study version of my No Regrets Career Academy last year, I tried to answer all the questions about how to choose a career that I could conceive of in the material itself.

But the most common question I got back wasn’t about how to choose a new career at all.  What most people wanted to know was: how can I stay motivated to keep going on my quest?

In trying to answer one of the most important questions of their lives, too many wanted to just give up.

The problems that caused them to give up on their dream careers the first time were the same issues that caused them to quit the second, third, or fourth time around.  The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t dream big (though that got harder each time they gave up), but that they couldn’t sustain their efforts on a project that felt so huge.

In this post, I discuss the simple solution that’s helping my clients get over the hump, so to speak.  And why I realized I needed a dose of my own medicine.

You keep telling yourself things will get better.

It was never perfect, sure, but what is?  You figured the irritations and self-doubt would go away, that you could change things with time.  After all, every relationship has its growing pains.

Except the feelings don’t go away.  They get worse.

You feel impatient, restless, and sometimes, yes, a little depressed.  When you’re being honest, you admit this isn’t the life you imagined.

Just when you’re about to give up, something happens that reminds you why you fell in love in the first place.  You think, “I just have to hang in there and give this a chance.”

Over time the spark begins to dim.  Again.

If we were talking romantic relationships, most of us would probably advise a friend in this situation to just move on already.  If you’ve been at it for years and you’re still unsure, what makes you think it’s going to get any better? There are lots of other fish in the sea, as the saying goes.

When it comes to careers, many of us fail to find the courage in our professional lives that we possess in our personal lives.  It seems so … different.

But is it?

Turns out, as your friend and career advisor, I’m going to give you the same advice: love it or leave it. But I’ll also do one better.

I’ll show you how to choose.

I met a couple of Spanish guys last November at a hostel in Munich. Unable to find employment back home, they’d moved to Germany hoping for better luck. I’d run into them every few days in the kitchen or the lobby, and inquire about how their job search was going.

They never had good news to report.