Last Updated on November 8, 2026 by Michelle
How unexpected connections, small actions and a willingness to explore new opportunities can bring our biggest ambitions closer to reality.
I attended an AI conference recently.
To be honest, the conference itself wasn’t particularly memorable.
I didn’t come away with any groundbreaking insights about artificial intelligence. There wasn’t a presentation that fundamentally changed how I thought about the future.
But something happened that made the afternoon unexpectedly worthwhile.
I met a woman.
We started talking, and during our conversation, she mentioned someone she knew who might be interesting for me to meet.
He was a founder who also organised talks and podcasts, largely around leadership.
That immediately caught my attention.
Not because I was particularly interested in attending another leadership conference.
But because I recognised that this person might be connected to a world I’ve been hoping to enter.
A world of founders, speakers, podcast hosts and people sharing ideas that inspire others.
A world that I hope will eventually become part of my everyday life.
I don’t know whether this introduction will lead to anything significant.
But I was sufficiently interested that I followed up.
And I’ve now arranged to meet him after I return from my upcoming trip.
It’s a small step.
Just a meeting with someone from an industry I have yet to enter.
I found myself feeling rather excited.
Because something I’d been imagining for my future suddenly felt a little closer to becoming real.
When You Know Where You Want to Go, But Not How to Get There
Over the past few years, I’ve been developing BYORM—Be Your Own Role Model.
What began as personal reflections about how I wanted to live the second half of my life has gradually become something much more meaningful to me.
I’ve written regularly, explored ideas about well-aging and living, developed a philosophy around intentional living and started imagining how I might eventually share these ideas with a wider audience.
I know that speaking will be an important part of that future.
I want to participate in thoughtful conversations about personal growth, aging, financial freedom, purposeful reinvention and what it means to live a fulfilling life.
I want to speak on panels.
I want to be invited onto podcasts.
And yes, I have some rather ambitious dreams about the people whose conversations I’d love to join one day.
Why not?
I enjoy listening to people like Oprah Winfrey, Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty, not simply because of their success, but because of their ability to make people reflect on their own lives.
I’d love to contribute to conversations that have that kind of impact.
But there’s a rather large gap between imagining yourself participating in those conversations and knowing how to get there.
I have spent many years building a career in a very different professional environment.
I have experience, ideas and stories I believe are worth sharing.
But I don’t yet know the world of podcast hosts, event organisers and independent founders particularly well.
In fact, until recently, the only founder I knew personally was a close friend who is building her own business alongside mine.
So while my ambitions have become increasingly clear, the path toward them has been much less obvious.
And that’s why a seemingly ordinary introduction at an AI conference made me excited.
It gave me a possible next step.
Sometimes Progress Begins With Meeting One Person
We often imagine that making progress toward a big dream requires a big breakthrough.
A major opportunity.
A significant achievement.
Someone important recognising our potential.
But perhaps the beginnings are usually much less dramatic.
A conversation with someone who shares an interest.
An introduction from a friend.
A coffee with someone whose experience is different from ours.
An invitation to participate in something small.
I think back to the woman I met at the conference.
She had no idea how meaningful that introduction might be to me.
To her, it may have been a simple suggestion that two people should meet.
To me, it represented a possible connection between the world I’m familiar with and the world I’m hoping to enter.
Of course, I have no idea what will come from the meeting.
Perhaps we’ll have an interesting conversation and nothing more.
Perhaps I’ll learn something useful about how podcasts and leadership events are organised.
Perhaps he’ll introduce me to other founders.
Or perhaps, at some point, there might be an opportunity to participate in a panel discussion or podcast.
I don’t know.
And I’m perfectly comfortable with that.
Because I’ve come to appreciate that we don’t always need to know the outcome of an opportunity to recognise that it’s worth exploring.
Sometimes the value of a connection is simply that it introduces us to possibilities we didn’t previously know how to access.
The First Step Toward a Big Dream Can Be Surprisingly Ordinary
There’s something I find quite amusing about the contrast between my long-term ambitions and the practical steps I’m taking today.
In my imagination, I can see myself participating in fascinating conversations with people whose work I admire.
Perhaps travelling to different cities to record podcasts.
Perhaps speaking at events where the audience leaves with a new perspective on their own lives.
Perhaps having conversations that reach people I will never meet personally.
Those are exciting possibilities.
But what am I actually doing today?
Writing articles at home.
Developing my ideas.
Attending occasional events.
Talking to people.
And arranging a meeting with someone who organises leadership talks and podcasts.
It’s hardly glamorous.
But perhaps that’s exactly how meaningful things begin.
I sometimes think we make our dreams feel unnecessarily distant by focusing too much on the final destination.
We imagine the finished business, the successful career, the published book or the large audience.
And because we can’t immediately see how to get there, the dream remains something we hope for rather than something we actively pursue.
But when we identify an ordinary next step, something changes.
The dream begins to feel less abstract.
We don’t need to know the entire journey.
We just need to see a little further ahead than we could yesterday.
And then take that step.
Why I Took Action Instead of Just Feeling Excited
There’s another part of this experience that matters to me.
I didn’t simply enjoy the conversation, think about the possibilities and then return to my usual routine.
I followed up.
I arranged the meeting.
It’s now in my calendar.
That might sound like a very small achievement.
And objectively, it is.
But I’ve learned over the years that the difference between imagining something and creating something often lies in these small moments of follow-through.
I have a habit of writing down things I want to do.
Not just big annual goals, but practical actions that move me toward them.
I’ve been doing this in different areas of my life for years.
Some habits are as ordinary as logging my daily expenses.
Others involve learning languages, exercising, reading or making time to write.
Individually, these actions rarely feel extraordinary.
But together, they’ve helped me become someone who increasingly trusts herself to do what she says she will do.
And that trust in myself has become one of my most valuable assets.
When I identify something that matters to me, I have confidence that I can take action.
Not necessarily perfectly.
Not necessarily with immediate results.
But consistently.
So when I recognised a possible opportunity through the woman at the conference, following up felt natural.
I didn’t need to wait until I felt more established as a founder.
I didn’t need to have a perfect presentation about BYORM.
I simply needed to arrange a conversation.
A dream becomes a little more real when we give it a place in our calendar.
The World I Want to Enter Is Still New to Me
Something else has become increasingly clear as I think about the next phase of my life.
I want my world to become bigger as I get older.
Not necessarily busier.
And certainly not filled with activities simply for the sake of being occupied.
I want a world filled with new ideas, interesting people, meaningful conversations and opportunities to contribute.
For many years, my professional life has been centred around a familiar industry, with its own networks, expectations and ways of operating.
I’ve learned an enormous amount from that world.
But there are other worlds I’m curious about.
The world of founders.
The world of writers and creators.
The world of podcast hosts, psychologists, researchers and people exploring what makes a good life.
The world of people who are building communities and helping others grow.
I don’t expect to enter all these worlds at once.
And I don’t need to.
But every new connection helps me understand a little more about what might be possible.
Meeting a founder who organises talks may introduce me to a different perspective on building an audience.
Speaking with someone involved in mentoring young women may help me understand where my experience could be useful.
Having conversations with people outside my usual professional circle may challenge assumptions I didn’t even realise I held.
And perhaps some of these relationships will eventually develop into opportunities.
What excites me is not only the possibility of a speaking invitation.
It’s the thought that I’m beginning to explore an entirely different arena of life.
One that I hope will continue expanding for years to come.
Not Every Opportunity Has to Lead Somewhere
I want to be careful about something.
It’s easy to become overly enthusiastic about every promising introduction.
To imagine that each new person we meet will somehow become the connection that changes everything.
But life doesn’t work that way.
Many conversations will simply be conversations.
Some introductions won’t lead to anything further.
Some opportunities will turn out to be less relevant than we initially imagined.
And that’s fine.
I don’t want to measure every interaction by whether it produces a tangible result.
I want to remain genuinely interested in people and what I can learn from them.
When I meet this founder, I hope to understand more about his journey, what he’s building and how he thinks about bringing people together through talks and podcasts.
Perhaps there will be an opportunity for collaboration.
Perhaps not.
Either way, I expect to learn something. And I expect to take some action.
And if I continue meeting people, exploring ideas and taking thoughtful steps toward my ambitions, I believe some opportunities will eventually emerge.
Not necessarily the ones I originally imagined.
Possibly something even more interesting.
That’s part of the excitement.
The Joy of Seeing a Dream Become a Little More Possible
One of the things I love about this stage of my life is that I have so many things to look forward to.
I’m not waiting for one enormous event that will suddenly transform everything.
I’m enjoying the process of discovering what might come next.
The small conversations.
The unexpected introductions.
The ideas that gradually become clearer.
The moments when something that once felt distant begins to feel achievable.
My upcoming meeting is one of those moments.
It hasn’t changed my business.
It hasn’t created a speaking opportunity.
And it certainly hasn’t brought me onto a major podcast.
But it has given me a small reason to feel excited about the future.
And I think those moments deserve to be appreciated.
Because progress doesn’t always announce itself through a major accomplishment.
Sometimes it arrives quietly, disguised as a conversation at a conference that wasn’t particularly interesting.
Sometimes it takes the form of a name, an introduction or a meeting added to our calendar.
And sometimes, that’s enough to remind us that the future we’re imagining may be closer than we think.
I don’t know where this particular connection will lead.
But I know I’m glad I attended the conference.
I’m glad I had the conversation.
And I’m glad I followed up.
Because I want to keep moving toward a future that excites me.
One conversation, one connection and one small action at a time.
Perhaps our dreams start feeling possible not when we can see the entire path, but when we begin to recognise the next step.
And then choose to take it.
BYORM — Be Your Own Role Model
The future doesn’t always arrive through big breakthroughs. Sometimes it begins with one ordinary conversation and the decision to follow through.
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