If You Wanna Change Your World
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Walking in a room full of walls of chocolate and all different kinds of candy is the dream. And the first time I experienced it was in a small candy shop in a giant California mall. I was only allowed as much candy as could fit in my little plastic bag. Back then I had small hands, so my grabbing capabilities weren’t as great as they’ve become today. Though my bag was less full than I would have liked, the feel of the bag when handed back to me made it all worth it. That tiny bag of bright multi-colored deliciousness changed my life. It expanded my world.
I experienced the same sort of thing when I first watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I saw how chocolates were made, packaged, and sent off to parts unknown. Then, watched other children like me eat them. How I wished to be one of them. My favorite scenes were those that involved the eating of candy. The first was in a beautiful candy shop where the song “The Candyman” was sung. Seeing the candyman allow the kids to grab whatever they wanted and try it all made me long to be there. The children were so happy as they stuffed candy after candy into their ready mouths. The candy was good. The atmosphere was perfect. The children were happy. Because above all things “the Candyman makes the world taste good.” I thought it couldn’t have been more magical than that.
Until I saw the Chocolate room.
It had everything I had never dreamed of, but once I saw it, it was my dream. The chocolate waterfall, edible grass, gumball trees. And of course the song, “Pure Imagination” made it all the more heart-expanding as people ran past Wonka. They did not sit around waiting for the Chocolate Room to come to them. They ran into it. Never looking back. They wanted to leave their worlds behind for this new one. And I wish I would have done the same.
I’ve gone through a lot of life changes. The college experience. The funerals of both of my mother’s parents and her oldest brother. Perpetual singlehood. It feels like my world has collapsed in on itself and there I am, trying to fit in the smallest corner of it.
But how do I do it?
There’s a plethora of self-help books out there and many that come recommended. I happened to pick up one of those books. Or should I say picked up again (I read it once before, but moved on with my life). It’s called the Magic of Thinking Big by David Scwartz (MD). Reading the preface got some pinprickles running up and down my hands, not in a hurtful way, but in a familiar one.
The line “Think big and you’ll live big” stuck with me this time. While this is one of the phrases that is toward the end of the preface it made me stop and think. How do I do that? I haven’t read the book since then, though I know that it’ll say something about it. I went on a quest to find other people who’ve already done it. Would anyone have an answer?
Finding An Answer
I turned to Medium first because I read a lot on here. Most of the things I found were about the same book I picked up, summaries and general opinions. After a few minutes of searching, I found some articles that I liked.
“How to Topple a Tree with Two Fingers’’ taught me about constraints, big and small thinking. Essentially, it said that we put constraints on ourselves. We base them on what we think is possible. Then, when we dream bigger we think we have to make bigger changes fast. However, if we can take smaller steps to our goals, the smaller things add up into big things. World-changing things.
I learned the same thing from the article “Elon Musk Proves that Big Ideas Are Actually Pretty Simple.” It focuses on how we complicate changing the world. Elon speaks simply about the things he does. He breaks down his world-changing views into small things and then builds up from there.
But the article that I liked most wasn’t anything based on science or marketing or technology. It was by a guy named Mat who dreamed big and then lived big in his own way. “The World’s Largest Lasagna: What I’ve Learned from Thinking Big.” Mat shared his experience at Cornell when he and a lot of other students attempted to make the biggest lasagna ever. They wanted that Guinness World Record to change because it had their names on it. And while they didn’t get the record clinched for the world, they got it for America. The greatest part about it was that a bunch of college kids decided to make a giant lasagna and did it. Now that is dreaming big. And they did change the world. It just happened to be theirs.
With the feeling of wonder and awe flowing through me, I took my search off of Medium. If there was one guy who could dream big like that, there could be others. I decided to look for more big dreamers like him. Not just famous people. But people like me. People I could connect with. That’s how I came across a Tedx talk by a guy named Ian Hacon.
He’s kind of amazing if you look him up. He founded his own company, spoke at TEDx and decided to be an energy coach. Oh yeah, and he’s also competed in the Ironman Triathlon six times.
His TEDx Talk “How to DREAM Big and achieve your goals and dreams” is inspiring to say the least. He said he figured out what all the successful people do. Hint: DREAM is an acronym that spells out his success and I won’t tell you what it means. To get the full benefit of his talk you should go and watch it. Because it’s one thing to read what someone else has said, but it’s a different thing to hear him say it. (Plus you actually have the benefit of hearing it).
But that wasn’t my biggest takeaway, it was his dream.
When he gave the talk he was approaching his 50th birthday. And his dream is to go to the IronMan World Championships. That’s a big dream for anyone, but listening to him say , “I just need to be 25% faster” made it sound like he could do it. One of the reasons he hasn’t done it yet, is the cancellation of all events last year. Another reason is that the next Ironman World Championship (2021) is being held in St. George, Utah, USA in 2022. That seems like a long time for someone to have to wait for a dream. But I believe in Ian. He’s already changed his world many times more than once. He can do it again.
With these different thoughts, opinions and ideas swirling over my head, I began to see how I could dream big.
Taking my cue from Hacon, I’m going to use my own acronym to form my thoughts. And Charlie’s coming back, too. The thing I came up with was BIG.
B is for Build Up
I was like Charlie. Stuck in my little world of drudgery and lackluster color. It felt like the long hours of hard manual labor was my destiny. Despite having felt the expansion of my world when I was a kid. Despite knowing that there was more out there. Despite knowing that typing this proves I can do it. It felt like the collapse of everything back into itself was all I could hope for now.
But that’s not it. World-changing has to be built, brick by brick, or in my case, word by word. It may seem small, but it always adds up. And from small things, big things happen. And when enough small things happen over a long period of time, big things like belief grow. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to wait for the small thing of getting money to buy chocolate to get a golden ticket. I just had to believe I could do it and then write.
I is for Imagination
If I couldn’t see it, then I could never achieve it. Charlie couldn’t see the factory. He didn’t know Willy Wonka, and didn’t even have the money to buy the chocolate to get the golden ticket. But his imagination got him there. He imagined himself seeing that gold ticket poking out from the wrapper.
And I realized that my dream, which is to be a full-time author, needed to be imagined by me. I had to figure out what it looked like. If I didn’t, then doing all the small things wouldn’t lead me to the Chocolate Room of my dreams. I would fall back into my small world. And you can believe that I imagine myself running into my Chocolate Room and never looking back.
G is for Go For It
Charlie could never have gotten the Chocolate Factory with its Chocolate Room and Oompa Loompas, if he did nothing after getting his golden ticket. If my big dream is to be a full-time author then I have to do something about it. Word by Word. Paragraph by paragraph. No one ever got and kept something that they never did anything for. Not really.
If you’re like me and you’ve been struggling to step out of the small world you’re living in, then I leave you with these words.
Do you want to change your world? You’ve got to go do it. And do it BIG.
