Dreams Have No Expiration Date
October 19, 2025
Reflect
At twenty-eight, Diana Nyad attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida, one hundred miles through open ocean. For two days she battled currents, exhaustion, and jellyfish until she was forced to stop just short of shore.
Life moved on. She built a career, told other people’s stories, and achieved success by every definition, yet the unfinished swim lingered quietly in the background. It was the dream that never went away.
Thirty years later, at sixty-one, she decided to try again. Friends questioned her. The world had moved on. She was decades removed from elite training, but the pull of purpose was stronger than fear. Four failed attempts followed. Storms, setbacks, near disasters. Each one taught her something new.
On her fifth try, at sixty-four, she swam for fifty-three hours and walked onto the Florida shore. Sunburned, salt-streaked, exhausted, and fulfilled. When asked what made the difference, she said, “Find a way. Whatever your dream is, find a way.”
Her story is not about endurance alone. It is about the long faith of keeping a dream alive, meeting it again with new strength, new wisdom, and new courage.
Implement
This month, an eighty-year-old grandmother named Natalie Grabow became the oldest woman ever to complete the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawai‘i.
She did not grow up an athlete. She found triathlons in her fifties after running injuries forced her to learn to swim. Over nearly thirty years she trained quietly, one workout at a time, balancing family, work, and rest.
When asked how she managed sixteen hours of racing, she said she simply kept moving forward. No heroics, no shortcuts, just steady commitment to what mattered.
Both women remind us that strength is not a number and dreams do not expire.
Ask yourself this week:
What dream or goal have I quietly set aside?
What is one small action I can take to “find a way” back to it?
You are not starting over. You are starting from experience.
Strengthen
Watch: “Don’t Be Afraid to Fail Big, To Dream Big” — Denzel Washington’s five-minute commencement address at Dillard University is a powerful reminder to pursue what matters, even when success is uncertain. He shares how faith, failure, and passion shape a life of purpose, closing with a challenge: You only live once, so do what you’re passionate about.
Read: People Magazine profile of Natalie Grabow, 80, the oldest woman to finish the Ironman World Championship — a story of patience, purpose, and joyful persistence. It highlights how she found the sport later in life and built endurance through years of quiet consistency.
Both remind us that there is no perfect time to begin again. Courage and consistency create their own timing.
Elevate
Dreams have their own rhythm. Sometimes they rest until we are strong enough, wise enough, or ready to carry them forward.
Age, timing, or circumstance are never disqualifiers. They are teachers that prepare us to begin again with greater depth and clarity.
Whether you are leading, creating, or beginning again, remember this:
Belief starts the motion.
Action builds the rhythm.
Momentum carries it forward.
Momentum Insight
Now that you’ve thought about what dream or goal you’ve quietly set aside and identified one small way to move toward it, let’s take it a step further.
Ask AI to act as your creative thought partner to help you turn reflection into motion:
“Help me design one practical way to bring my long-held dream or goal to life this week. Show me how to make progress that feels aligned and achievable.”
Use it as a space to explore possibilities, map the next move, or surface new ways of thinking. Sometimes an outside perspective or thinking outside of the box, helps us see what’s been waiting in plain sight.
Because once momentum begins, clarity grows, confidence builds, and possibility expands.
Next week: Courage over comfort. Staying open enough to grow when everything in you wants to play it safe.
Subscribe to The Weekly Momentum.
