Success Quote by Barbara Sher

Sher’s line sells motivation the way a good coach sells a hard workout: not as self-improvement theater, but as a switch that flips reality from dull to charged. “You must go after your wish” uses the language of necessity, not preference. It’s a gentle command dressed up as encouragement, and it sneaks in a worldview: agency isn’t a personality trait, it’s a practice. The imperative matters because it refuses the modern temptation to treat desire as content to be consumed (vision boards, podcasts, inspirational quotes) rather than a direction you physically move toward.

The subtext is almost transactional. Meaning isn’t discovered by thinking harder; it’s generated by pursuit. Sher collapses the distance between “dream” and “life” by making action the moment of awakening: once you pursue, your life “wakes up.” That metaphor is doing heavy lifting. Sleep is passive, safe, and numb; waking is risky, embodied, and exposed. She’s telling you that the price of a meaningful life is the discomfort of getting up.

Context sharpens the intent. Sher built a career in practical, entrepreneurial self-help (especially for “scanners” with many interests), aimed at people with stalled ambitions and respectable excuses. Read that way, the quote doubles as an intervention: stop waiting for clarity, permission, or perfect confidence. Start moving, and the meaning you’re chasing shows up as a byproduct of motion, not as a prerequisite. That’s why it works: it reframes purpose from an answer you find into a state you enter.