This past October I bought a new-to-me car. It came with a sweet stereo system that included Bluetooth audio playback. So of course, it was vital that I figure out how to exploit this new tech toy (I’m such a geek!). I figured out how to connect my phone so I could listen to music but quickly got bored (I’m not a music geek). So I decided to give podcasts a try again … it’s something I’ve always loved but the process of listening was a bit too cumbersome without the right technology (I’d also gotten a new smartphone around that time). It worked. And I was immediately addicted. So my daily 3 hour commute was filled with glorious information about design, business, humor and stories. I was in heaven!
Somewhere along the way I discovered a podcast by Sean McCabe – The Seanwes Podcast. He’s a handlettering artist, turned business guru for creative people who want to follow their dreams while pursuing their passion. Once I got hooked on his message, I just had to go back and listen to the entire backlog. All 150 episodes from the very beginning. Talk about binge listening!
Epsiode 68: You Have One Life – Set Bigger Goals knocked me on my butt. It is about setting bigger goals. Like really big goals! I remember that episode began just as I was getting home from work on a Friday evening and I sat in the driveway listening long after I’d arrived home. Midway through the episode he tells you to shut off the podcast and go write down your big goals. I complied. Taking that opportunity to go into the house, drop all my stuff and grab my Midori Travelers Notebook (another new obsession at the time) and wrote down my “big goals” and was pretty proud of myself for how awesome those goals were.
But then came the “big” part. I turned the podcast back on and Sean’s next instruction was to go back to that written goal and double it. DOUBLE IT! Whoa! Seriously? I’d already written a pretty big goal, how on earth was I ever going to double that in real life? But I did it. I went back and crossed off stuff and wrote in new – bigger – goals for myself.
Then what? Well, then Sean said the next step was going to be hard but that it needed to be done. Write down 20 tasks to start today that will move you closer to the reality of those goals. The first 10 or so were pretty easy… then it got hard. But I kept writing.
I really did get stuck on the task list though, so I started writing about goals and what they looked like in more detail. Also what skills I had that could help me achieve the goals and what ideas I had about how to follow my passion. I just kept writing. And writing. And writing. For four days. Every spare moment I had I wrote more and more and more stuff. That following Monday was Martin Luther King Day and I had the day off work. Somehow I ended up sitting in Applebee’s for lunch and filled my notebook for three hours on that day – just writing it all out. My brain just wouldn’t shut off. I’ve nearly filled a whole notebook now and I still find myself writing down plans and ideas and tasks nearly every day and it’s over a month later.
And now here I am with a website and I’m writing some more. And I’m putting it out to the world. I’m going to achieve those goals while you all are watching (and hopefully setting and achieving your own goals right along with me). Many of my thoughts and all those pages of writing are still a jumbled mess that needs to be sorted out and categorized and analyzed.
But I’m good at organizing stuff. Lining it all up into neat columns and making sense of jumbled messes. That’s one of my strengths and I plan to leverage it to make this thing work.
That’s how all this got started. If you want to play along, I recommend you go check out Episode 68 and start your own big goal list. Sean’s goal is to buy a Lamborghini … so it’s become known in the Seanwes Community as the “Lambo Goal.” (He’s even started a new podcast with Matt called The Lambo Goal.) My Lambo Goal doesn’t involve buying a Lamborghini, but I’m still using the term to refer to my big dream. My Lambo Goal is to live someplace warm, near the ocean, be financially free, travel a bunch, and work for myself. You can keep track of my ongoing list of goals on The Big Dream page.
What’s your Big Dream?