Thinking Big – An Unsettling Question

I listened to a podcast this weekend, an interview by Tim Ferris, (one of my favorite interviewers) with Peter Diamindis, who has been named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” by Fortune Magazine.

Among a variety of topics, they discuss Dr. Diamindis’ upcoming book, Bold, How to Go Big, create Wealth, and Impact the World.

It unsettled me. In a good way I think.  As I listened to Tim Ferris and Dr. Diamindi consider a wide range of grand ideas and examples of people who think big, and I mean really big, I felt like I was a kindergarten kid who had somehow wandered in to a room with the college students – it was inspiring, mind opening, and like I said, rather unsettling.

To consider such questions as “What could I do with my life to be remembered in two or three hundred years?“ (as Ferris states, not for vanity purposes, but as a helpful question), “Is there a grand challenge, or a billion dollar problem, that you can focus on?” really rattled my self created cage!

Who hasn’t dreamed of changing the world?  I certainly did, in my idealistic youth when I looked to Paulo Freire’s “critical consciousness” as the answer to the poverty and oppression I saw everywhere I looked growing up in Latin America, which inspired my work in health education in rural Guatemala in my twenties.

Now I lean to a more spiritual take on the world and I look to my belief in the inter-connectedness of all peoples and life, and in the creative power of the One Mind that expresses itself through us all. I look for answers in the stillness, in what Matthew Fox refers to as “the well of mystical experience”, in the Oneness that unites us.

I can see that in both my adolescent vision of a more just and equitable world, and in my current spiritual framework, there lies the conviction that grand change is possible. That although we are living in a time of huge challenges, we are also living in a time of infinite possibilities. So listening to this interview, begged the question… what if it is possible to change the world in a huge way?

Just asking myself this question is inspiring me to ponder the possibility of my voice having a big impact on the world…. Gosh, even writing that makes me feel like crawling into a hole and covering my head. “How vain,” says the voice of judgment. “How ridiculous," says my critical mind. “How terrifying," says my introverted personality.

But you know what? Call me a dreamer, call me naïve, but I believe it is possible for each and every one of us to have a legendary impact on the whole, and that the more we connect to our own passion and purpose, to our own unique experience, to our own voice in the world, the more possible it is for heaven to reign on earth.

So here is my question for you to ponder, dear reader:  What dream is calling you to change the world in a big way?