4 minute read
Boundless dreams Aim high, soar higher
BY BRUCE CAMPBELL
We all know the expression: There’s no time like the present. This proverb was first recorded back in 1562. Then a couple of hundred years later, John Trusler amplified it by adding, “A thousand unforeseen circumstances may interrupt you at a future time”.
So, if you want to avoid those thousand things taking you off-track, there really is no time like the present to take action on your goals and dreams. What better time than the start of a new year to really get clear on those goals and write them down?
What I want to share with you is all about living your dreams and seeing how far you can push it.
About 25 years ago I picked up an Economist magazine and in the back of it there was an ad for an executive course, where you could go to Harvard Business School. There were also similar courses offered at Yale and Stanford. I thought to myself, wouldn’t that be cool to go to one of the big boys and learn from some of the smartest minds on the planet. Well, in early 2024, I got to fulfil one of my dreams of going to Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts. The course I just completed was Mergers and Acquisitions - Strategy, Execution and Post Merger Management. There were 81 people there from 31 countries.
I love being a student. I always have. So, I loved sitting around all these smart people. In my class was one of the head guys from Airbus in Toulouse, France. Another was a Professor at Harvard Law School who was involved in the case of Elon Musk with Twitter. I’m sitting there with my eyes wide open, taking it all in.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get great scores at school… just average at best… and so doing something like this was just not on my radar. I didn’t think it was possible.
My message to you today is: When it comes to limiting beliefs, the more you break them down and just go after it, the better. See what’s out there. See who’ll take you! Ask the question. Just go after that thing that calls to you. When you’re resourceful, things happen.
I’ll give you an example of an exercise we did that reveals just how much we humans can hold ourselves back due to limiting beliefs. It’s a lesson about the principle of self-sabotage and this is so often an unconscious practice.
About 10 years ago, we put out a job vacancy notice for a General Manager role. It had the usual language you would expect to see, ‘We are seeking a general manager…’ But it was for a fictitious job. The job did not exist. We just invented it to test this general principle of self-sabotage. The first week we advertised the annual salary for the position as $50,000. We got 161 applications for the job. The next week, we advertised the same job, with exactly the same wording, but this time we gave it an annual salary of $250,000. So how many applications do you think we got? I can tell you. It was four. The job description didn’t change. It was still the same job. Only the salary changed.
Most people who looked at it would have thought, I’m not worth $250,000. Or only people with a certain background and experience get that amount of money. There was a self-sabotaging point there, purely on the dollar amount.
In closing, I issue to all of you a call to action. Dream again! No matter what stage you are in life, dream again! Then allow yourself to deeply feel the dissatisfaction of where you are currently and overcome your fear of taking the next step.
So many business owners have allowed the day-to-day grind to steal their dream and the faith that they had in that dream. They no longer believe in the vision that they once had. Are you one of those? Do you want to know how to recreate a vision that will propel you forward? Then find someone who can give you a fresh perspective. Someone who can help you blow through what’s been holding you back. It ain’t over till it’s over!
“Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. The secret of success is in turning that diary into the best story you possibly can,” Douglas Pagels.
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