Dare to Dream BIG
My recent trip to Las Vegas was quite an educational experience.
As I stood in the lobby of the Palazzo to check in and stared at the vaulted ceiling, marble floors and walls, and a sculpture of three female forms larger than life surrounded by a gigantic swirl of vines, I could only think, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”
I imagine that Dorothy in Oz felt much the way I did in Vegas. Country girl plopped into the land of glitz and glamour, of celebrity and the fantastic, standing with eyes and mouth wide open and with her mind stretching to encompass and adapt to what seemed unimaginable and impossible only that morning.
Yes, I’ve traveled—in many parts of this country, in some of the major metropolitan areas, and to Canada, Hawaii and the Virgin Islands—but for some reason, up until Vegas, I really had not grasped how big the world is in terms of business potential and possibility.
I thought I was dreaming big, reaching for the stars in my vision of my work, but the megawatt lights of Vegas illuminated for me that my ideas of BIG were limited by my experiences and therefore my beliefs of what was possible. I didn’t have any concrete images to put in my head about what being BIG could really look like. And, baby, Las Vegas is all about BIG!
Because my community up to this point was made up of a great group of writers and artists, most of whom struggle with limited budgets and incomes as I have, my idea of what I might earn and create with my business was limited by others’ limitations. Not a good thing. My smaller vision kept me from not only daring to dream BIG but also kept me from thinking creatively. Ironic, huh?
But my ability to dream bigger, to dream BIG, wasn’t changed just by the place. It was also changed by the women I met at the entrepreneurial conference, SHINE, organized by Alexandria Brown, an event that drew many women making high five- to high six-figure incomes. But it wasn’t just the size of their incomes that had an impact.
Many of these women—from England, Australia, Norway, and the Netherlands as well as from across the US—were successful women entrepreneurs who helped, coached, guided or served others, whether their clients were people struggling with English or health or parenting, or discovering their souls’ purposes, or creating businesses of their own.
Seeing what they were accomplishing in their corners of the world, how could I not dream bigger?
So now I know. It is important to put myself, periodically, in an environment that makes me stretch my vision of who I am, what I can do, and how I can serve.
We too often limit our creative dreams and visions based on past experience.
Time to stop that. Go someplace where you can dream bigger. Then dream BIG. Paint a bigger canvas for yourself. Write a bigger book. Dance on tiptoe. Reach for higher notes…or the stars.
Go ahead…reach. Dream BIG.