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Act 147:

“It’s never too late… To Think Big

Widen your horizons. Look beyond your normal limits. See things in a larger picture. Consider the next step. The flow-on effect. Opportunities will become evident. Motivations will become clear. Perspective will emerge.” – Patrick Lindsay

Quote in book: “One must live the way one thinks or end up thinking the way one has lived.” ~ Paul Bourget

You can take the words “Think Big” and take it two different ways. The first is Open your eyes. See the bigger picture. Or you can take it like the “idea makers” out there and think larger than life. In terms of goals, dreams, ideas. Open your brain and expand your mind.

Let’s take the first one. Because I’m a systems engineer, I have to look at the bigger picture all the time. It is my job to take all the information look at each individual segment and see how each segment fits together. It is my job to look at everything from a system perspective. My biggest problem is that this is my job and the people I work with only are concerned w/ their little piece of the pie, where I’m concerned with the entire pie. Taking the pie metaphor… I’m responsible for making sure we get a nice berry pie that is a little sweet and a little bit tart. All the people I work with are concerned w/ just their little parts. Making the crust or picking the berries or putting in the sugar or flour or salt. So imagine making a berry pie w/out a recipe and each person is just concerned with putting as much of their ingredient in the pie. Now imagine you’ve got a very strong personality who’s in charge of the salt content and a very weak personality who’s in charge of the sugar content. You just end up with a very salty berry pie. It’s my job to make sure that the sugar and salt are added in the right amounts. Look at the bigger picture. In this particular case, the sugar is more important that the salt. However, if we were making a salt crusted fish… then the salt person would need to be more involved and the sugar guy not so much.

Thinking BIG in this context is pretty difficult for me. I’m not very good at coming up with those big ideas or having huge dreams. I’ve always been closer to a realist than and optimist. In fact, for most of my life I’ve been a pessimist. In terms of my hopes and dreams, I’ve always dreamed or tried to achieve the achievable. I’ve never ever really wanted or thought that I could be a pop singer or an actress, even though I’m pretty decent at both. I’ve never really been really good at coming up with the big ideas or brainstorming. I’ve always been a lot better at improving or modifying someone else’s idea to make it better.

I think the difference between the two is that one is the logical and analytical side vs the abstract and creative. So, the best combination in terms of success is to team me up with someone who thinks big in terms of ideas and I’ll make sure all the details work together. Believe it or not, I’m actually working on a project w/ an artist. We are creating some art that deals w/ a lot of math and perspective. It’s really interesting how we work together. She can draw and sketch things very quickly and then we make adjustments to what the angles and perspectives are. I don’t want o give away what our ideas are, because this could turn out to be a really really cool project that I hope for her sake, garners her a little bit of cash money! =) what is it they say.. Go BIG or Go Home… I’m hoping that by thinking Big in both contexts… we can win big! =)