When the Wright brothers first dreamed of flying, they were told it couldn’t be done. Many had tried and failed. For two men who didn’t even have high school diplomas, creating a “flying machine” was indeed a very big dream.
If the Wright brothers had listened to the voice of reason—endlessly embodied by the many pragmatists surrounding them—they would never have gotten off the ground. Quite possibly none of the rest of us would have either!
Their growing list of crash reports was proof aplenty to their skeptics that human beings just were not meant to fly. After the Army failed to get their plane off the ground as well, The New York Times reported that it might be another 10 million years before a working airplane could be built.
A common substantiation for our innate inability to fly went something like this, “If God had meant us to fly, wouldn’t he have given us wings?” That question, like so many of our fear-based limiting beliefs, grossly underestimates God’s creativity and magnitude. What if, instead of just giving us physical wings, God gave us the gift of imagination. So that we might not just figure out how to fly, we would also discover how to soar in myriad other ways as well?
Fortunately, the Wright brothers didn’t give up. While others were limited by an unwillingness to fully exercise their imaginations, Wilbur and Orville were not. Wilbur and Orville had a dream. They imagined the impossible and, by dreaming big, they planted the seeds and blazed the trail to their future.
Because they were determined to make their dream a reality, Wilbur and Orville did. Like the bumble bee, that, based on the “laws” of aerodynamics, shouldn’t be able to fly, the Wright brothers transcended conventional wisdom and limiting beliefs to manifest their destiny.
Instead of becoming discouraged by “failed” attempts, they understood that each perceived failure was bringing them a step closer to the precise way in which they would ultimately succeed. A mere eight days after The Times had predicted that humans might be grounded for many more millenia, the Wright brothers achieved their first successful flight. Thanks to their creativity and persistence, flying—once considered something only birds could do—has become commonplace.
Before anything can exist, we first need to imagine it. Let your imagination soar. What might you begin creating today if you started letting yourself dream big? Let ‘er rip! We need you!
When you dream big, you don’t just plant the seeds of your future. You plant the seeds of OUR future!
I believe Steve Jobs said “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”