HEALTHY LIFESTYLE · JULY 2018
THINK BIG, CRUSH
MEDIOCRITY AND
CHASE YOUR DREAMS
“Dream big.”
“Shoot for the stars.”
When I was a kid, I was told these things. I’m
sure you were too. I went back and forth
between wanting to play professional football
and wanting to become an astronaut—goals
that were totally unrealistic. But no one told
me my dreams were unrealistic.
There weren’t people out there saying I
couldn’t do these things. My parents would
even smile and encourage me. And I didn’t
think about the scale of these ambitions
because I was a kid. Thinking big was part of
my persona, as it is with most kids.
But as you grow up, you lose touch with your
childhood dreams. I’m not specifically talking
about your ambitions to pursue a unique
profession such as a professional athlete or
astronaut. I’m talking about your knack for
thinking big. Some go after their dreams but
many more will go through school, enter the
workforce, get married, and during that time,
their dreams gradually fade away.
But for those of you reading, you still have that
dream in your head. You might have forgotten
about it or gotten busy doing other things, but
it’s still there. You still have thoughts of what
could have been.
I’m here to tell you that it’s not too late to
dream big.
Look at Richard Branson. He doesn’t think
small. He doesn’t think 1x or 2x. He thinks big—
10x, 20x, 100x. He asks how he can take his
idea, product, business, etc. and make it spread
like a wildfire. He asks how he can leave an
impact on the world.
Richard Branson is an excellent example
because he is always thinking big. Even though
he never received a formal education and
suffered from
dyslexia as a
child, he didn’t let
that interfere with
his dreams. One of
his headmasters even
said that he would end up in
prison, but that didn’t stop him. After a few
failed ventures, he started a magazine in 1966
and Virgin Records in 1973 and never looked
back. His estimated net worth as of June 2015
was $5 billion.
Again, all without a formal education.
He doesn’t have “credentials.” He doesn’t have
an MBA. But he is a hustler and his approach
has always been simple: think big and have
fun.
I once worked at a company whose CEO’s
mission was to turn the business into a $100
million company. I would sit at my desk and
think, “That number seems too small. Why
not $1 billion?” Don’t get me wrong, $100
million is a lot of money, but it seems as
if these days $100 million companies are
common. Who wants to be common? Do
you want to leave your mark on the world or
what?
So why didn’t this CEO think bigger? Why
don’t most of us think bigger? There are a few
reasons why—thinking big isn’t a skill anyone
teaches nor bothers to learn. If you reflect on
this for a moment, why would someone teach
this? It’s not a tangible skill. You can’t use this
skill to build a house, create software or repair
a jet engine. And secondly, how do you teach
someone to think big?
28 HEALTHY MAGAZINE