How Clearly Can You See Your Moonshot?
“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” — Mizuta Masahide
I am not a runner. I am not a jogger. I am a stomper - the imperfect expression of mass, awkwardly plodding step by step to escape the pull of the earth, in increments of 10-15 miles per week.
Sometime during my midlife crises, I decided to train for a half marathon, a race of just over thirteen miles. This distance represented a moonshot to me, a jump in running experience so big it was difficult to imagine even finishing. Not sure where to start, I presumed an increase in weekly mileage was in order, but to what? To 20 miles per week? Double to 30? I am happy to say I figured out the necessary training needs and did complete the race without major trauma or physical damage. But I was surprised by my eventual weekly mileage, which tripled to 45 per week. As difficult as that was, it occurs to me it was easier going from 15 to 45 miles per week, then it was from zero to 15 miles per week.
What made it seem as if, once past the original push, the bigger goal was easier to achieve?
Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, explains mental models as “deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar was of thinking and acting.” My familiar way of thinking and acting was an invisible pull on my initiative, working like gravity to keep me in a comfortable and familiar place. My age told me I was too old, my weight told me I was too fat, my job told me I was too busy, my ego told me I was too slow, and my history told me I have limits. Five formidable critics, all of my own making, and all in my head. There was something freeing about reaching subsequent levels of mileage that made it reasonable to consider going farther. But looking back, the hardest battle was getting past the collection of reasons I rationalized for staying right where I was.
Moonshots are oddly specific. “We’ll put a man on the moon by the end of the decade” ”We’ll double our revenues in three years”. “ I’ll triple my training mileage”. But what constrains us can be much less specific, unique to the individual, and characterized by a lack of awareness about what supports our belief systems. Moonshots must be specific to focus resources and effort. Constraints often operate below our level of consciousness and are vulnerable to being structured by unchallenged assumptions.
So how can we break free of the kinds of thinking that limit our initiative?
We should RELEASE every assumption. What we hold requires our energy and cooperation. Remember the five critics I described? All of them are the product of assumptions. They exist only because I give them permission to occupy space which could otherwise be open to new ways to see myself and the world.
We should RECEIVE with intention. Once we release unchallenged assumptions, we are free to pull back the elements of them that can serve us. For example, I may not be too fat to run, but I do understand losing weight will help me run faster. Once we internalize the idea that we have freedom to choose what we truly need, we will accept information from wherever it may come.
Finally, we should always DELIVER our best. We are always delivering. Our reputations precede us, our reactions announce us, and our interactions define us. We may as well choose what we deliver.
RELEASING what we do not need and RECEIVING what serves us well, inclines us toward DELIVERING our best.
Awareness of our mental models requires courage because we may find the need to burn them down to give us a better view of our moonshot.
Jess Villegas: CEO, Business Performance Consultant, Leadership Mentor