I’ve spent the last few years trying to come up with a big dream, something that would inspire me to get out of bed every morning and bust my ass. Publishing a book has been a creative dream of mine for quite some time, but for some reason, it hasn’t gotten me to really take action and send out more than 15 submissions to agents and publishers. What was missing? Is the dream impractical? Or maybe the problem is that it isn’t big and audacious enough to really get my juices flowing.
Jim Collins popularized a term in business called a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG), which is a “long-term goal that everyone in a company can understand and rally behind. BHAGs are meant to excite and energize people in a way that quarterly targets and lengthy missions statements often fail to.”
This is a goal that should cause everyone to initially say, “you’ve got to be shitting me,” but the idea of it is so inspiring, that they ultimately rally around it and find a way to make it happen.
A non-business example would be John F. Kennedy’s 1961 goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. Since he announced this goal before America had even sent a man into space, there had to be a number of people within NASA who muttered to themselves, “you’ve got to be shitting me.” Well, they obviously found a way.
So if my dream to publish a book one day isn’t a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, what is? How about giving a Ted Talk in 5 years. My initial reaction upon thinking this? “Who the heck am I to give a Ted Talk?” And “You’ve got to be shitting me.” Good start right there!
This excites me and energizes me for a number of reasons:
I loooove presenting
I’ve thought about being a teacher all my life, and if I am respected enough in a particular topic (creativity?) to give a Ted Talk and educate an entire paying audience, well that would be pretty darn cool. And it would probably open doors to even more teaching opportunities.
In order to give this Ted Talk, I would need to have accomplished quite a few things, as not just anybody is asked to give one. So that would mean I would probably need to have published at least one book, maybe have started a podcast, get this blog to go viral, start an ambitious non-profit that contributes to the world in some way, etc. Outside of the ego stroke associated with each of these accomplishments, it’s pretty exciting to think about how many people I will be able to connect with if I am successful. And if my Ted Talk is on YouTube and goes viral? Even more people!
So how do I go from where I am now, an unpublished author working on a creativity blog that hardly anyone reads, to giving a Ted Talk? That’s a topic for another day. Cause right now, I’m still kind of in the “you’ve got to be shitting me” stage.