{The following post was taken from the #GOALDiggers weekly newsletter. If you need an extra shot of inspiration to start your week, sign up!}
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Recently, I was riding with my little brother and we began to talk about his life after college. Although he has a year left, he’s worried about landing a job. Like many soon-to-be grads, he’s concerned about finding a job that will not only pay the bills, but will also be something he won’t hate.

While we drove, I asked him to think beyond what job he’d settle for just for a decent paycheck. Instead I asked him to think about what he’d do if money wasn’t an issue.

Just a little background: My brother is a musician. He’s played the piano, organ, clarinet and bassoon for years, often times spending hours practicing complicated classical pieces and performing with his school’s band. So when we were discussing his future profession, I found it odd that music never entered our conversation.

When I brought it up, I heard a familiar refrain: “I would love to play…but there’s no money in it.”

He had automatically dismissed doing what he loved because he thought it would be impossible to make a living—despite the fact that thousands of musicians make money from their art.

Listening to my brother reminded me that this was the exact same story I told myself for years. I stayed in my teaching job, wishing that I could trade it in and become a writer, but the thought seemed utterly foolish to me. The starving artist thing only seems to be cool if you were in your early 20s, and I wasn’t interested in eating beans and rice every day for my art, no matter how miserable I was in the classroom.

Thankfully, I realized that while I was lamenting about my job and feeling stuck, others were doing exactly what I wanted to do, and I quickly set about changing the course of my life, one step at a time.

So how does this relate to you? Like my brother and me, I’m sure you’ve talked yourself out of your dreams many times before. Perhaps you thought your dream career was foolish, or maybe you felt you were too old, too stuck, or too far in debt to start over (or too jaded to love again). Whatever the case may be, only YOU have the power to change your situation.

We believe the story we constantly tell ourselves, so stop talking about all of the things you cannot do, and start thinking about how you can turn your challenges into opportunities.

Once you move from “Woe is me” to “I think I can,” you’ll not only start to see that your goals are possible, but you’ll begin to see a path to reach them.

So…what’s stopping you?