Stop Thinking Big; Start Seeing Big

Relax. Breathe. In a life full of stressors and troubles, you are about to receive great, happy news. You may agree with it or disagree at first, but a part of you set deep inside, that mystical part which understands when and where it encounters truth, will begin to churn and hum. You will understand that what you are about to read is different from all the other noise.

Here is where we begin: If you are someone who struggles to find motivation, your primary obstacle to achieving your goals has nothing to do with who you are. You are not less creative, you are not less smart, you are not less driven. Consider this: every human being is equipped with trillions of neurons programmed by nature’s genius to supply you with every skill and emotion you need to achieve anything which you desire. In your life you have felt the same emotions as Einstein, you have had the same thoughts as Freud, you have asked the same questions as the Buddha. In you is that essence of human nature that is sufficient to achieve the most beautiful and magnificent accomplishments. You are more complex than you could ever realize, and you have more capacity and ability than you could ever actualize or manifest in just one lifetime. All humans are gifted magnanimously in this way. We can all lead live overflowing with accomplishment.

The problem is not who you are.

Read close this subtly different method: the problem is the way you think about you. The problem is your perspective. The problem is the way you deal with your emotions. The problem is the way you understand yourself. The problem is your fear. The problem is everything you think is “you” that really is not you at all.

Without “you” to get in the way, you would have near unlimited potential. Isn’t that funny? A catch 22. The things that make you “you,” are the same things that limit and destroy your true nature. You believe you are limited, or defective. Who is the one doing the limiting? Who is the one doing the defecting? It is you.

You become the limits which you place on yourself. You say you were never very talented at mathematics. How can you be if you have decided not to be? When you do this, your true self dies. Your humanity dies. You have fallen from your natural grace. Do you know how to be fully human? To be the perfect, truest human being? Do nothing. You are it. You are human. Task complete. Allow yourself to be who you are. Only suffering can come from trying to be something you are not.

And it is by the hands of the ignorant you have been misled. You have been lied to. You have been maligned and disadvantaged. You have been told stories about yourself, what you can and cannot do, and in your fear you obeyed, internalized, and bowed your head. You paralyzed yourself with thoughts of failure, thoughts of underachievement, thoughts of inferiority.
You did this. It is your fault. And you know what? That is incredible news. That realization, when you have it, is remarkable. You did it. It’s your problem. This means you have the power to undo it. You have control over it. You cannot make a problem without having some control over it. You have never lost control. You have simply forgotten you ever had it in the first place. You have driven the car off the highway and onto the bumpy, uncomfortable road, and then you have abandoned the wheel and wonder how to guide it back to the highway. Let me tell you why this has happened to you.

Thinking. This is the root of the issue. Without thought you would have no fear, no limitations, no inhibitions. Your thoughts are not you, and yet you have come to believe they are. If this was not so, how come you can be so offended when someone calls into question your politics? Your dreams? Your beliefs? Your ideas? Ideas have no feelings. If you are made to be upset when your ideas come under attack, then you have identified with them. You have become your ideas and lost yourself.

Back when you were piloting the car, you were not thinking, you were acting. And then the second you found yourself in a place you wished not to be, you gave up control and turned to thought to save you. You contemplate what gear you should be in, whether you should open the sunroof, whether you will begin to slow down, what the best weather for driving would be. Because of your thinking, you do everything but grab back control of the vehicle and begin to drive your life where you want it to go.

And so you are told to THINK BIG. You are told to remain in this state of non-control. And you are so afraid of being small that you listen.

Do you know what it really means to think big? Do you know what you are really being told? How hopelessly hypnotized you are to accept somebody else’s message?

Let me tell you what it is to think big. To think big is to play with toys. To think big is to fantasize about fictions. To think big is to create impossible standards that you desire so feverishly you are driven mad with lust and envy. To think big is to forget reality and substitute your own fantasy in its place. To think big is to forget yourself, to create a set of impossible standards that, failing to achieve them, you deem yourself a failure and become depressed. To think big is to make an unsustainable attempt to escape your fear of being small, which you have come to believe is who you are. To think big is to convince yourself that escaping your fear by such daydreaming is actually helpful to you. To think big is to abandon yourself for somebody else’s idea of success and pretend that doing so can do anything but destroy you in the end.

When you think big, your mind is in the future. Your plans are in the future, and your accomplishments. Look how simple this is: nothing has ever been accomplished in the future. Nothing has ever been done in the future. Nothing achieved. Nothing. All things are in the present. The present is where you must bring yourself. The present is where you must act if you wish to achieve your goals. It cannot be any other way.

And the bigger you think, the smaller you become. You slowly dispose of reality and you dispose of yourself. Heavens, what accomplishment of any worth could you possibly achieve without those two things!

Thinking big is one big mess of a misunderstanding.

Now you begin to see. Your eyes begin to open to what is wrong with the way you are behaving. Hopefully you feel some sense of despair. That means you are beginning to recognize how hopeless your past situation has been. You’ve heard the worst of the criticism. From here on out we will slowly guide you back. We will begin to empower you. Give you tools to fight. Guide your hand to the wheel of the car. The rest will be up to you. Read On.

Think big, think here, think there, think everywhere. It doesn’t matter. Thinking has removed you from the here and now. Thinking has destroyed you. It is thinking that makes you miserable. Forget it.

You may wonder about these words; you may have become lost. How can I achieve my goals without thinking? How can anything of value be done?

Look here, this will be enjoyable for you to see. Remember some goals you have achieved in the past about which you are proud. Remember the things you did to get it and then ask yourself: when you are truly accomplishing your goals, when you are in the thick of things, when you are firing on all cylinders, when you are advancing in your pursuits -- where are your thoughts? They are not there. This is the feeling of being “in the zone,” of being in “flow state.” No thought. Thought has abandoned you because you have no need for it. When you are thinking, you are not doing. When you are doing, you are not thinking. So enough with the thoughts!

Then what is to be done, eh? How to achieve your goals?

Shake yourself, pinch yourself -- you are not dreaming, but you are very, very lucky -- I have the answer right here for you. To achieve your goals in three steps. Here you are. You will never need another self-help book.

1. Practice being aware of yourself, and you will begin to understand who you are. This means to watch the feelings you feel and the thoughts you think without reacting. Forget if they are good thoughts or bad thoughts, if they are productive or not, just observe and accept the reality of them.
2. Reflect on what you really want. This will become more clear the more you practice awareness and understand yourself. You will begin to find that you do not want fictions, you do not want to think big, you do not want what is not real. It is impossible to truly desire something you see to be unattainable. You will see this and drop many of your goals, entirely voluntarily. This does not mean you have to give up your goals completely. Rather, the quality of your goals will change. They will be based not in fear of failure, but understanding that they are possible.
3. Do what must be done to achieve what you want. Work only in the present, where all things are done, and understand that it is in the present that the future is made. Advance in the direction of your goals.

That is it. Really. Look again if you have to. Come back again and again if you wish, for you will probably forget these steps. They will be here for you.

It seem too simple, you might say. Reaching your dreams takes hard work, and battling through confusion, and overcoming impossible obstacles.

No.

Do you know what requires those things? Battling with yourself. Battling against your own self-imposed limitations. It is with those you do battle, and you have mistakenly attributed the great difficulty of that battle to that of pursuing your dream. Pursuing a dream takes no effort at all. Believing you are pursuing a dream, which is what we do when we think big, creates difficulty, but a true dream does not require belief or thinking. Only understanding and doing. Those are things which will help you; you should treasure them.

Start with you. The problem is in you. So too is the answer. Follow the steps and you will gain clarity. In clarity there is confidence, purpose, fulfillment and happiness. You will begin to see that things can be very simple. You are the one who makes it complex. Work at the three steps. Practice them, particularly the first one. First things first. With awareness all things will come. Slowly, unmistakably, the knots in your mind will untangle themselves. Focus on the here and now.

Remember: if you are thinking, you are not doing. To think requires a “you,” a character you have created with hopes and dreams and desires. To think is to believe in a fiction, which is to be confused. Understand who you are, cease striving for fantasy, and you will have found yourself and rediscovered the present moment from which you can finally begin your work. Stop dreaming and start doing. Do, do, do. That is all there is.

And then…

Something magnificent will begin to happen to you. Something truly gorgeous and profound. You will begin to have visions. Small at first, but always growing stronger. You will begin to see your future, your goals, and what must be done to achieve them. Not in the literal sense, of course, but in the figurative one will you begin to see the path you must take and the things you must accomplish.

All the great figures throughout history tell us to think big. Well, here is their dirty little secret: they used the wrong word. It is lost in translation. Those who accomplish great things do not think about the future, they see what is possible and they go get it. To them it feels like thinking, but it is something subtly different which is understanding or seeing. To see and not think, you must be grounded in what is real, you must first understand that which is, rather than believing in that which is not. You must do this no matter the cost, no matter your fear of the truth, or you’ll be chasing the flickering after-images of your imagination until the day you die. The phantoms and ghosts that will make you feel as if you are constantly achieving something while you are in reality stagnant. This dissonance is why you become depressed, why you lose motivation, why you feel like a failure, and if you let them these feelings will haunt you until the day you die.

Stop thinking big. Stop creating fiction. Focus on you. Reform yourself. Know yourself. Follow the steps and you will begin to see big.

You are on your way.