A successful friend of mine once gave me this advice: “Whatever you are thinking, you are not thinking big enough.” The context for this advice was actually a pretty big idea on my part, and my reaction was one of puzzlement. Bigger? Is that possible? This was many years ago and it has stuck with me. It made poignant to me something that Naveen Jain once told me: “Our greatest limitation is not our abilities or resources, it is our imagination.” The nature of these limitations is what intrigues me: I don’t deserve it, I may fail if I try it, I don’t know how to do this, I don’t have the time, I can’t learn it, people will shame me if I try this….
These inner messages are incredibly powerful and incredibly difficult to untangle. My mom used to tell me, when I wanted to share some success with her, to be careful not to let my head get too big or, my favorite, what will the neighbors think. Let’s just say that although I don’t pay much attention to those voices anymore, they will always be with me. My guess is that you have some similar less-than-helpful voice tracks in your head that may be keeping you from daring to imagine something bigger, better, healthier and happier for yourself. This stuff is certainly not about rational behavior.
Why is it that a doctor may tell his patient to start doing X or they may die, and 2 months later he checks in and the patient has done nothing? Warned again, the patient dies shortly thereafter having not changed his behavior. Then, on the other hand, there are entrepreneurs who have an idea, start a business and push forward having no idea how to get it done but the faith that they will figure it out. In one circumstance, the patient may be thought of as crazy; in the other, the entrepreneur may also be thought of as crazy. I see it as one being bad crazy, the other good crazy.
There is a difference between dreaming and manifesting, but before the one, we need the other. 86% of adults in this country have one or more symptoms of cardio-metabolic disease and, unless all these people have remarkably negligent physicians, they have been told there is a problem. In my experience, it is that the patient is suffering from one of the voices I wrote about in the beginning. Let’s all think bigger; maybe not Elon bigger, but bigger than we have been. Even if just for a moment, imagine a bigger, healthier, happier life, and what small step you could take today to move in that direction. It is not getting from zero to a hundred that is the hardest; it is getting from zero to one. Go for it.
Onward and upward,
David
