Chad Silverstein argues that pursuing your best work means dreaming without self-imposed limits. He points to MLK's "I Have a Dream" as a model for setting goals that feel unrealistic, and says avoiding negative self-talk is how you actually get there.
Chapters
Think big in a way that is unrealistic. And the reason that I say that is why would you want to be realistic? You know, I'm a very logical thinker and I like to keep things simple and things have to make sense to me. But when you are playing with your opus and when you're shooting for something that's an ideal, you don't have to be realistic and you don't have to know how you're going to get there, but you do have to let yourself go. You don't know the power behind doing an exercise like that. And so when you are going to start writing out your opus, when you're going to start dreaming big, you've got to be thinking that Martin Luther King dream, I've got a dream, right? I have a dream. And you gotta make sure that you don't limit yourself because you're gonna self negative talk out. You know, there's no way I can do that. It's not realistic. You can't make money doing that. Whatever the case is, you completely sabotage yourself when you do that. It's never too late. And you have a responsibility for your kids, if you have kids, to live a life worth living. And the way to do that is to point in something big and go after it.