Entry № 24 · Plate xxiv
On AmbitionGive up playing small. Dream bigger; act bigger.
A timid ask is its own kind of refusal.
The explanation
Playing small feels safe, but it is just a slow no said over many years. The size of your ask quietly sets the ceiling on your life. Dreams that scare you are not arrogance — they are honest. And dreams without massive action are just décor. Pick the big version. Then take a step the small version would never dare.
The story
At a Friday happy hour, a co-worker asked my friend Ben, half-joking, what he would do with his life if he weren't afraid. Ben laughed it off with the rest of the table, but on the train home he took out a napkin and wrote a single sentence: 'I would start a company that makes hearing aids ten times cheaper.' His mother had been going deaf for a decade and could not afford the good ones.
He stared at the napkin all weekend. On Monday he told no one. On Tuesday he told no one. On Wednesday he quit his job. His parents were furious. His savings gave him nine months. He spent the first three learning what he did not know, the next three finding two engineers who shared the napkin's obsession, and the final three building the ugliest prototype I have ever seen.
Five years later the company exists. The hearing aids are real, are certified, and are, in fact, roughly a tenth of the market price. His mother wears a pair. Over dinner last summer I asked him what the hardest part had been. He didn't hesitate: 'Not the technology. Not the money. Not the launch. It was the six months between writing the sentence on the napkin and letting myself say it out loud to another human.