Each one of us is inching toward graduation. We are inching toward the next semester, the next year and the next phase of our life. If you’re like me at all, that makes you both terrified and excited. Whether you are looking for a job, an opportunity overseas or a grad school, we’re all in a similar boat.
Here’s the terrifying part: You might not find something. You might not get the job or school or job opportunity to want. Your life is on the edge of a huge change and all you can do is sit and wait.
Knowing that can do weird things to your psyche. You may be confident in your abilities, in your education, in your future, but you may have a voice in the back of your head asking “What if?” That voice tells you to get real, to stop even considering the job, opportunity or school you truly want. Why? Because you have a chance of being rejected. You have a chance of failing on something that really matters and you know how awful that could feel. So you stop dreaming big.
“Inc.,” a business magazine, published an interview with business professor and author Vijay Govindarajan about innovation after the publication of his book “The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge.” When asked what a leader should do to facilitate innovation, he gave one piece of advice: Dream big.
To dream big means to accept failure as a part of the process. It means to define your own meaning of excellence and stop comparing yourself to everyone else around you. It means to stop making excuses and start doing what scares you.
That’s all easy to say, isn’t it? It’s easy to see the benefit and the beauty, but it can be really difficult to actually do.
Let’s start with the discussion of a goal. We’ll say you have dreamt up a big goal or a big project. You’re excited, you’re passionate, you’re scared and you may be a bit neurotic. It seems like a big task, and you don’t want to screw everything up, so you spend your time thinking and planning and obsessing instead of actually doing. So start small. Big projects overwhelm everyone. But start tinkering and eventually what seemed like a series of small, insignificant tasks will add up and give you the boost and motivation needed to power through the rest.
What about jobs? What about the threat of the future? I think you know, deep down, how to get to work on this one. You silence that stupid, pessimistic voice in the back of your head, and apply for that job, internship or grad school. Stop being afraid to wholly commit yourself to something you want and just go do it. Stop putting arbitrary limits on yourself and what you can accomplish. Work for it, and put in the time, but know that someone will always be more qualified than you. Know that you may fail, but that’s OK and something else will come along.
In order to be innovative and creative and someone who can change the world, you first need to believe that you are capable of changing the game, of being your own competition and of shifting the paradigm.
