Dream Big summary

According to the Bible, after disobeying God, Adam and Eve went into hiding and felt deep shame. God then asked them Where are you? Although God knew exactly where they were physically – hiding behind a bush – what God really wanted to know was where they were spiritually, mentally.

If you’re floundering, and want to get your life back on track, you need to ask yourself this same question. Where are you right now?

Now that you’ve been honest about where you are in life, look ahead at where you want to go. When doing this, don’t hold back. Don’t censor yourself. Get right to the heart of what you truly want from life. If that’s a Lamborghini and a villa on the French Riviera, then say that. Don’t pretend. Lying to yourself will only cause regret later.

Make a list of all the things you dream about. Perhaps you want to become an engineer at Tesla, hike the Pyrenees, own a pet llama, renovate an old house, or be more generous. Whatever it is, you should write it down. When you’ve done that, get specific about those ambitions. If you leave them vague, they’ll stay that way.

When sifting through your goals, you’ll see that they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. There’ll be little ones, medium-sized ones, and big ones. Now that you have this ragbag of dreams, go through them and sort them in terms of their importance to you and their feasibility. Essentially, you need to vet your ambitions.

The key message here is: Before you get started on your dreams, vet them.

Just as you’re about to get started on your life’s ambitions, a little voice speaks from deep inside your head. It says, You’re not good enough to be a scientist. It says, You’re not attractive enough. It says, You’re going to be dirt poor for the rest of your life. You try to quiet this voice but it comes back louder and louder until it fills your ears.

If you want to make your dreams a reality, you need to deal with this voice and silence it as much as possible.

Now that you’ve narrowed down your dreams to the most meaningful ones, you need to take some action. You can’t keep dreaming forever. There comes a time when you need to take some actual steps down the path you’ve chosen. Sure, those first steps might be very difficult. And they might be discouraging. But you’ve got to take them. And as you take these steps, be bold and persistent.

The key message here is: Be audacious and persistent when you’re exploring opportunities.