I have little clue how to achieve my Grandest Vision.
By all rational accounts there’s no way it can be done.
Unlikely I can achieve even a fraction of what I’d like to see in our world.
It’s all good.
I never let that belief stop me.
The best you can do is your best to keep bringing your dream to life.
Your dream?
How are you doing on your goals?
I don’t know if you use my System For Doing What You Want and have established your Grandest Vision?
You might know this “Grandest Vision” is the term that I use in my books and some of my programs, such as this on Rocketing To The Top Like Musk and Bezos.
It’s the best way that I’ve come to define your biggest, most lofty, grandest, but still achievable goal for your life that you are constantly moving towards.
It’s like Elon Musk colonizing Mars.
Or Jeff Bezos once setting out to build The Everything Store.
Lofty, for sure, but obviously doable.
How grand are you dreaming?
Why?
Why not?
Ultimately, much of my work comes back to this.
Because why should you need a why to go after living the life you TRULY want?
Living your grandest life is why enough, right?
Who dreams to live a lame life?
Of course many of us get stuck living a shadow of the life that we truly want, but how many of us tell our kids to ‘not dream’ that way?
We all love to dream, or at least we all once did.
Dreamtime
The Aborigines indigenous to Australia have a notion called Dreamtime which embraces the most important aspects of their spiritual beliefs and creation.
In Aborigine culture the world is far more magical than that of the white man who invaded and colonized their land.
As a title of a book on Aborigine culture from 1979 well captures—
“White Man Got No Dreaming.”
Of course many of us of every color and culture still dream.
Just, sadly, mostly in a limited way.
Limited thinking
Us oh-so-sophisticated modern-folks tend to look at ancient cultures and all of their beliefs like they are a step behind.
We perceive ourselves to be so smart and rational and know so much, when mostly we think negative and limited.
As I always say, it’s never our fault.
Our brains and society are built to keep us fear-filled and well-controlled.
A reason I created the program on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is because I was seeking an escape.
This was back during the first lockdowns when negative, limited thinking was even more extreme.
I wanted more dreaming.
Believing in what is possible.
Inspiration from people who go for it, irrespective of our fear-filled world.
“What’s the Internet?”
Back in the 1990’s Jeff Bezos was dreaming of starting The Everything Store.
Raising his first dollars to get Amazon started Jeff tells a story of having 60 meetings, getting 40 nos, 20 yeses, and hearing the same first question every time—
“What’s the Internet?”
Consider this for a moment.
Jeff Bezos was a successful guy from humble beginnings who hard worked his way to a top job on Wall Street.
Sitting in his top hedge fund job he came up with his ‘crazy idea’ to start Amazon.com, which he first thought to call Abracadabra.
He knew it would take some magic to pull it off.
Believing there was a 70% chance of failure to even get the bookstore started, let alone achieve the Grandest Vision of building The Everything Store, he got moving.
A classic story Jeff Bezos tells is being down on hands and knees packing those first boxes of books to fulfill the first set of orders that quickly came streaming in.
The rest is history.
Expecting failure
Well, I don’t want to give the impression that I thought Tesla would be successful from the beginning. I actually thought we would fail. I thought we would maybe have a 10-20% chance of success, I mean, startups in general fail. And auto startups especially.
That’s Elon Musk describing his expected chances of success at Tesla.
He says basically the same thing about SpaceX too.
Meaning, these businesses that have now propelled him to arguably the most successful builder of our modern era, he once perceived had little chance of success.
Still, that never stopped him.
Some people might say, OK, well, if you have $180 million that you can pour into these adventures of yours Elon, then what do you really have to lose?
Exactly; only money and dreams.
Yet, how many would first lose the dream?
Forgetting failure
A client wants the career he TRULY wants.
Over decades on Wall Street he’s in many ways got it, but that’s not enough for him.
He wants what he wants and he’s willing to keep doing what it takes to get it.
Over years working together I’ve seen him achieve extraordinary things.
It’s just, there’s one tiny problem here.
He hasn’t believed it’s possible for him to achieve his Grandest Vision.
This has held him back leaning in some tiny ways, that MASSIVELY count.
If only he could believe it is possible he’d unlock more of his potential is a natural way of thinking.
A LIMITLESS way of thinking is to forget what you believe.
“Matrix Mind”
Beliefs are rules.
They are code in our brains that govern our behavior.
Our brains are full of beliefs which in our school of therapy and transformation, Rapid Sustained Transformation, RST, we refer to as forming a Matrix Mind.
This Matrix Mind you can see like a set of vertical and horizontal lines that form a matrix of sorts in your brain, as my stunning diagram at the top of this page depicts.
Along these lines that neatly and logically intersect.
And within the “Boundary Conditions” that logically and neatly fit, you define your life.
Like a kid coloring within the lines, we’ve all learned to operate safely within the boundaries of the beliefs that form our Matrix Mind.
Whether we believe something is possible, for instance, most often defines our boundaries.
The programming code being something like: Don’t believe possible -> Avoid trying.
People like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos paint wider lines.
Wider lines
We all have limiting beliefs that well, limit us, including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
It’s just in this context you see a clear example of how one can draw wider lines.
Contrast the limiting belief above: Don’t believe possible -> Avoid trying.
With the limitless belief that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk had in starting their adventures: 70-80% chance of failure -> Worth a try.
Of course we’re simplifying here, but do you see that their choice to go for it can be stated simply as this one different belief?
Just one different rule?
One different line of code?
Whereas many people will forever run and hide from things that might serve them a heavy hand of what our society calls “failure,” others live freely.
And in fact with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, rather than run from failure, they Use Failure, as Principle 7 in our program details and I wrote about here.
Failure means something different to them.
It’s moving closer to success.
Unreal beliefs
Do you see the power of this belief?
That failure means you are moving closer to success?
Do you see how this may or may not be true, but you help make it true if you Use Failure to keep getting better and better and better?
Doesn’t mean that you will achieve your Grandest Vision.
But it does mean that you will keep moving forward in a way that you optimize the probability streams.
See, look, there’s something fundamental on beliefs that is so crucial if you’re looking to unlock all of your potential.
It’s to see that your beliefs are NEVER real.
The real question is, do they best serve you?
Best serving you?
It’s like Elon Musk believing that Tesla only had a 10-20% chance of success.
There’s zero basis in reality of whether that’s real or not, as of course we all have zero ability to predict the future.
The ONLY question that matters with this belief and all beliefs is, do they best serve you?
For instance, in this case, if you’re going to give it 100% no matter the odds as Elon does anyways, it never matters what your expected chances of success are.
And you can see in his brain that being the underdog with people betting against him only serves his will to succeed.
Here in this quote from Jeff Bezos you see how this type of belief serves him, whether or not it would best serve you—
And so if you believe on that first day while you’re writing the business plan that there’s a 70% chance that the whole thing will fail, then that kind of relieves the pressure of self-doubt. I mean, it’s sort of like I don’t have any doubt about whether we’re going to feel that’s the likely outcome. And it just is and to pretend that it’s not will lead you to do strange and unnatural things.
Grandest possible?
So you see a point here is that it doesn’t mean your Grandest Vision is possible.
How could you possibly know?
I’m betting that you’ve experienced plenty of things in your life that you didn’t once believe were possible, right?
What you do know is that what you believe about what is possible, and what you are willing to do, or not do, based on your rules is what limits, or unlocks you.
Is your Grandest Vision possible?
Keep in mind that most people gave up their dreams.
Others never go for it because they lack believing it’s possible.
Whereas you can live your Grandest Vision whether you believe it, or not.