It's Okay If Your Goals Look Different Now

Changing Direction Isn't Giving Up

There's a goal you've had for years.

Maybe it was a specific company. A specific stage. A skill that once defined where you were heading. You built years of training around it.

And quietly, somewhere along the way, you stopped wanting it.

Almost nobody in circus talks about this, because it feels like betrayal. You told everyone the dream. People invested in it, trained you toward it, believed in it with you. Wanting something different now feels like letting them down. Like all those years were wasted.

They weren't. Goals are meant to be set by the person you were. Living toward them is what turned you into someone new. It would be strange if years of growth, injuries, relationships, contracts, and experience left your ambitions completely untouched.

Wanting to tour less. Wanting to create your own work instead of performing someone else's. Wanting stability, or teaching, or a completely different discipline. These aren't failures of commitment. They're evidence that you've been paying attention to your own life.

The only real failure is spending years chasing a goal that belongs to a previous version of you.

💡 Your challenge this week:
Write down your biggest career goal. Then ask honestly: do I still want this, or am I just used to wanting it? Both answers are fine. Only one of them is worth your next five years.

P.S. For my whole career, working at the Moulin Rouge in Paris was one of my biggest dreams. Nowadays, as cool as it would still be, I could never see myself wanting to perform 14 shows per week at 10pm and midnight.