A few days ago, I received a message through my webpage contact form that made me freeze.
It was from a woman named Sheralyn, and she was writing to me about a passing critique I had made in a recent article regarding a very famous, ubiquitous phrase: “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
For decades, that line has been slapped on motivational posters, graduation speeches, and coffee mugs. It is almost universally—and incorrectly—attributed to Walt Disney. In my book, The Purpose Code, I actually use this exact quote to dismantle what I call “outsized purpose.”
I wrote that the problem with this kind of messaging is that it places too much importance on big, audacious dreams, setting people up for severe purpose anxiety. I even dug up the true history of the quote, noting that it was originally written by a woman named Sheralyn Silverstein as copy for a General Electric recruiting brochure in the 1980s. I argued that the original intent was much more mundane than a Disney fairytale: it was corporate marketing designed to get kids into engineering so they could help GE make money.
Then, Sheralyn herself found my writing. And she decided to give me the context I missed.
“It’s How You Survive”
Sheralyn didn’t write to me in anger. She wrote to offer the kind of vital human context that look-back research simply cannot capture.
She explained that she wrote those words in her twenties. And she didn’t write them with a smirk or a sense of corporate cynicism. She wrote them because she deeply, truly believed them.
“When you grow up with limited means as my family did,” she wrote to me, “dreaming big isn’t naive. It’s how you survive.”
She went on to tell me about her life—a successful career, a beautiful 51-year marriage, and a daughter who became a successful attorney. She told me that if she hadn’t allowed herself to hope that those words were even remotely true, she isn’t sure any of those wonderful things would have happened.
Her line outgrew that old GE brochure and became a mantra that millions of people held onto because, as she beautifully put it, “it was a hope that found its audience.”
The Two Sides of Hope
I emailed Sheralyn back immediately. I sent her the exact passage from my book. I wanted to be transparent about how I parsed her words, but I also wanted to validate her perspective.
Because the truth is, we are both right. We are just looking at the exact same coin from opposite sides.
From my perspective as a hospice doctor and financial writer, I constantly see the wreckage of the “dream it and do it” mentality. I see people who feel like utter failures because they didn’t become the next Michael Jordan, the next astronaut, or a billionaire tech founder. Today’s social media environment has weaponized “dreaming big” into a toxic metric of self-worth, causing severe anxiety for people whose true purpose might be beautifully quiet, local, and ordinary.
But Sheralyn reminded me of the other side of the coin: Optimism is a tool of survival for those who start behind the starting line.
When resources are scarce, the utility of a big dream isn’t about elite achievement or corporate optimization; it’s about expansion. It is the psychological leverage required to break gravity and push past a restrictive environment. If you don’t allow yourself to dream of a reality wilder than the one you are currently stuck in, you might never find the energy to take the first step.
Rewriting the Footnote
This is the ultimate joy of writing in public. It keeps you humble, and it forces you to add nuance to your own tightly held dogmas.
My point was never that the concept of dreaming is inherently flawed, but rather that its modern, hyper-commercialized mutation can make people feel inadequate. But by ignoring the lived experience of the person who put those words onto paper, I missed the heartbeat of the phrase.
Sometimes, a slogan isn’t just a piece of corporate copy. Sometimes, it’s a young woman daring to believe in a bigger future because she had to. And there is nothing mundane about that.
What do you think? Does a phrase like “if you can dream it, you can do it” inspire you to push past your circumstances, or does it add to your daily anxiety? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
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It’s a fine line, isn’t it? Because the people who accomplish the most always have audacious dreams. And also, 99% of those with audacious dreams don’t accomplish them. The middle ground, the sensible ground is to have attainable dreams. But if everyone takes a sensible approach, I doubt there would be nearly so many amazing accomplishments. Is that a good trade? 🤷♂️