Man, let me tell you about dreams. I always thought that stuff was just brain trash, right? You eat too much pizza, you get weird visions. But this recurring one, this mountain top dream, it kept hammering me, especially when my life was totally upside down. Now I track these dreams like they’re stock market indicators.
The Dream That Wouldn’t Quit
For months, maybe a whole year, I was stuck trying to launch this app—a total bust, obviously. I poured every dime into it. I was sleeping maybe four hours a night, living off cheap coffee and sheer, idiotic hope. That whole period, I kept dreaming the same thing: I was climbing this giant, gray mountain. It was always cold, the air was thin, and I could never see the top. Just this relentless uphill grind. I’d wake up exhausted, feeling like I’d actually hiked 10 miles.
I mentioned it to a buddy, and he just laughed, said I needed to quit stressing and maybe take a vacation. I dismissed it as stress, anxiety, whatever. But looking back now? That dream was screaming warnings at me. It wasn’t about the success at the top; it was about the path I was on, which was clearly leading nowhere fast. I was forcing it. Trying to build this empire brick by brick when the foundation was crumbling. I chased the VC money, I chased the hype, and I totally forgot why I even started this stupid thing in the first place.
The fog in the dream equaled the fog in my decision-making.
Hitting the Wall and Finding the Real Climb
So, why am I telling you this whole sad startup story? Because it’s exactly why I learned how to read these signs. The app finally crashed and burned. Hard. Like, bank account empty, eviction notice on the door, kind of crash. I was completely wiped out. I actually sat in my empty apartment, looking at the peeling wallpaper, thinking, “This is it. I’ve failed everything.”
The crushing feeling lasted about a week. Then, I decided I had to physically move. I couldn’t sit there and let the failure eat me alive. I started walking. Just flat walking in the local park. That quickly turned into needing something harder. I literally drove up north, found the nearest decent hiking trail, and started climbing.
I wasn’t doing it for fitness. I was doing it to replace the internal pain with physical pain. I remember the first major hike—it was grueling. I was huffing, slipping, my knees were killing me. But when I reached that smaller peak, not Everest or anything, just a local summit, I felt this strange sense of quiet. I sat down and looked at the world below.
That night, I had the mountain dream again. But this time, it was different. I wasn’t just grinding away in the gray fog. I was seeing the path. I could look back and see the switchbacks, the parts where I nearly fell. And when I looked up, the top wasn’t hazy and distant; it was clearly defined, and there was sun on it. That clarity, man, that’s the sign you need to pay attention to.
Decoding the Success Sign through Practice
This is where the practice part comes in, the stuff I documented religiously in my notebook. I kept hiking. I didn’t immediately get a new job or invent a new product. Instead, I started using the mountain as my framework. Every decision I faced, every new project I considered, I mentally compared it to the climb. I literally wrote down my internal checklist, forcing myself to use verbs of action and clarity:
- Am I just grinding in the fog? (Meaning: Am I busy without a concrete, measurable goal? If so, ditch it.)
- Is the path visible? (Meaning: Do I understand the next three steps required to achieve this?)
- Do I have the right gear? (Meaning: Do I have the skills, support, or funding already in hand, or am I relying on “maybe later” resources?)
- Can I enjoy the climb? (Meaning: Is the daily work itself sustainable and minimally enjoyable, even if hard?)
When I finally landed this job, the one where I get to write and share this random stuff, it didn’t feel like a sudden success. It felt like walking onto a ridge after a long ascent. It was clear. I could see the landscape of the future. The mountain top dream, I realized, wasn’t a prophecy that I would eventually be rich or famous. It was a warning sign about how I was treating the journey. When the dream was foggy and endless, it meant I was ignoring the process and only focusing on the result—the summit. That leads to burnout and failure, every time.
The true success sign you need right now is this: If your dreams, your current efforts, feel like an endless, confused slog up a mountain you can’t see the top of, you need to stop. You need to look down, redefine the path, and maybe start climbing a different hill. The clarity in the dream reflected the clarity in my plan.
I literally threw out half my old business plans. I reconnected with people I had ghosted because I was too ‘busy’ climbing my imaginary peak. I focused on stability and meaningful work over the flashy ‘big win.’ And guess what? The dreams are now about resting on the summit, watching the sunrise, not the miserable, invisible grind itself.
The mountain top isn’t the sign. The clarity of the path leading to it—that’s the sign that you are actually winning, and it’s what I use to validate every big step I take now.
