Best commencement speech ever? Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes: “Ditch the dream and be a doer”

It’s highly likely you’ve been told to follow your dreams at one point or another. There are countless famous quotes from people from different walks of life who have spoken about the importance of “dreaming big.”

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” and all that.

But is the shooting, rather than just the dreaming, the most crucial part? That is certainly the view of Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, who revealed as much in a captivating commencement speech at Dartmouth College, her alma mater, in 2014.

Dreaming, she says, is just the first part of the journey. And if you aren’t proactive, your dream will remain exactly that.

Why “doing” matters much more than dreaming

“I think a lot of people dream, and while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people are busy doing,” Rhimes explained.

It makes a lot of sense. Anybody can have a dream, which costs nothing. But not everybody is willing to do what it takes to turn that dream into reality.

Rhimes, also the executive producer of “How to Get Away With Murder” and “Bridgerton,” told graduates about her younger self’s dream, which was to emulate novelist Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Things ultimately worked out rather well for Rhimes, but not until the penny dropped.

“While I was dreaming, I was living in my sister’s basement. Dreamers often end up living in the basements of relatives, FYI,” she joked.

“But one day, I thought, I could dream about being Toni Morrison, or I could do.”

How “doing” and not dreaming changed Rhimes’ life

Doing, in this case, meant going to film school, inspired by a New York Times article that stated getting into USC School of Cinematic Arts was more challenging than getting into Harvard Law School. The current acceptance rate for USC School of Cinematic Arts is around 3%.

Film school “flipped the switch” in Rhimes’ brain and “changed the way I saw the world.” The dream was over, but the reality was even better.

Rhimes told the story of how, years later, she had dinner with Morrison, who wouldn’t stop talking about Grey’s Anatomy.

“That never would have happened if I hadn’t stopped dreaming of becoming her and gotten busy becoming myself.”

The message behind Rhimes’ commencement speech

So stop dreaming, and start doing. The effort is greater, but the rewards might just be worth it.

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