what you keep calling "being realistic"

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Today:

• the way "being realistic" quietly becomes a ceiling you built yourself, and what it is actually protecting you from.
• a sculptor who spent 37 years on a mountain no one believed in, and what he said when they asked why.
• Otter.ai, turning your own voice memos into clear thinking in under ten minutes.
• one sentence to write down before noon.

I was on a bus last week, half-listening to two women in the seats ahead of me. One of them was describing something she wanted to do, some kind of career shift, some version of her life that was clearly alive in her head. And her friend, genuinely trying to help, kept saying some version of the same thing: "but realistically, though." "I'm just being realistic." The first woman went quiet after a while. Not convinced. Just tired of defending it.

Your perception^

Where in your life are you using the word "realistic" as a reason to stop, when it might actually be a reason you are afraid to start?

There is a version of being realistic that is genuinely useful. You should know your numbers. You should not quit your job on a Tuesday because a podcast inspired you. Grounding matters.

But there is another version of "realistic" that has nothing to do with numbers. It is the voice that steps in just when something starts to feel possible. It sounds like reason but it feels like relief. Like you have been given permission to put the thing down.

I have used it. I have called something "unrealistic" and felt my shoulders drop immediately, like the pressure went somewhere. That is not thinking. That is avoidance with a respectable name.

The question worth sitting with is not whether your idea is realistic. It is whether "realistic" is doing its actual job, or whether it is just the most polite version of fear you have access to right now.

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."
Edmund Hillary

Your acceleration^

In 1948, a Lakota sculptor named Korczak Ziolkowski turned down a commission from the US government to work on a federal monument. Instead, he drove to South Dakota to begin blasting a different mountain entirely. One that no government asked for. One that almost no one thought was serious.

He was carving the face of the warrior Crazy Horse into a granite mountain called Thunderhead. By hand, with dynamite, mostly alone. The mountain was bigger than Mount Rushmore. He had no federal funding. He had no guarantee it would ever be finished. He had ten children and a wife and a work schedule that started before 5am every day.

Journalists asked him often: is this realistic? Are you sure this will be completed in your lifetime?

He said he knew it probably would not. He kept going anyway.

Korczak died in 1982 with the face still unfinished. His wife and children carried on after him. The face was completed in 1998. The full figure is still being carved today.

He did not start because he was sure. He started because the alternative, doing nothing with the time, was the only thing that actually felt unrealistic to him.

What is the thing you have been calling unrealistic that might just be taking longer than you want it to?

Your move^

Voice memos are where your real thinking lives. Not your notes app. Not your drafts folder. The two-minute ramble you recorded in a car park at 6pm when an idea finally clicked.

Try this today: open Otter.ai (otter.ai, free to start), record yourself talking through one thing you have been circling for weeks. Not a plan. Just talking, out loud, for three to five minutes. Otter transcribes it in real time, and you will see your own thinking clearly for the first time. Patterns you did not notice. The one sentence that keeps coming back. It is not about productivity. It is about hearing yourself honestly, without the filter of a keyboard.

Your destination^

Tonight or tomorrow morning, write this sentence down and finish it honestly: "The thing I have been calling unrealistic is actually _________, and the real reason I have not moved on it is _________."

You do not have to show it to anyone. You just have to write it.

If you removed the word "realistic" from your vocabulary for one week, what is the first thing you would do differently?

Floyd

P.S. The woman on the bus went quiet, but she did not look convinced. That matters.