On behalf of our team at View From The Top, I want to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving this week! We’ve had such an incredible and different year. But we haven’t stopped dreaming or reaching for the sky. We want to carry on the legacy that brought the first immigrants to our nation’s shores … because they dreamed big.
As we wrap up a study of Michael Hyatt’s book, “The Vision Driven Leader,” I’ve spent the last several months thinking and praying about vision. Our mastermind business grew a lot this year, and we’re positioning to make it even bigger in the years to come.
I’ve always been a dreamer, and don’t like to think small. There’s this thing called “blue sky ideation,” and it means you remove every limit to what’s possible. Just for the sake of imagination, you don’t even consider normal restraints. In other words, for a moment, you imagine pigs really could grow wings and fly.
My other role as a Christian life coach includes helping people stare at something that appears to be dead … and making it come to life. There’s this story in the Bible where a prophet named Ezekiel stands in this valley full of the dry bones of dead men, and they come to life. A terrible divorce, for example, becomes a healthy marriage.
You have to wonder what the Pilgrims, arriving on the Mayflower in the late 1600s, dreamed of when they got here. I don’t think they dreamed that one day we’d join online mastermind groups and connect with people on the other side of the planet. They couldn’t imagine it. But I do believe they dreamed big, based on what they understood at the time. The New World held so much promise for them. For many of them, it was the first time they knew what it was like to be free. We’ve taken that for granted all our lives.
There’s promise for your life and business, especially when you join a mastermind group. Fill out an application to be part of one of our groups for men or women here.
Why You Can’t Afford Not To Dream
It’s November 2020. The Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts in November 1620, exactly 400 years ago. One of their key leaders was William Bradford, who became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He kept a journal, called “Of Plymouth Plantation.” I don’t know if you’ve ever spent winter in Boston or New York, but it starts to get pretty cold this time of year!
Now you might think, “Big A! I live in cold climates, it’s nothing to worry about. Just put on layers and you’ll be fine.” Well, that’s one thing in 2020 with our country fully developed, and plenty of warm places to go in the winter! It’s another thing, as Bradford pointed out, when there was absolutely no one and nothing to welcome you when you got off the boat.
Think about it - no hotels, no restaurants, no cafes. No street lights, no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. No turning back, no calling home, nothing. Just a cold winter in an empty, untamed forest. The only thing you could do was start building … the first campfires of what would become the greatest, most advanced civilization in history!
There’s no way those people sailed on the Mayflower because they had nothing better to do. They were dreaming, and dreaming big. You have to figure - none of these people lived to see even the Revolutionary War. Many of them died during that first winter.
Ten years later, another group of settlers boarded a ship to sail from England, to settle the community that would become Boston. John Winthrop, one of their spiritual leaders, declared that the new community would be “a city on a hill,” with “the eyes of all people upon us.” Man, can you imagine the vision it took to believe that?
This is the kind of vision I want for the members of our mastermind groups. But you’d be surprised, how some people react to it. They don’t want to mess with creating vision. Can you imagine how many people had the chance to come to the New World, and stayed home? And look what they missed out on by doing it! We owe it to our ancestors to dream big.
Don’t stay home, when you have the chance to dream big in community. Our online masterminds are a healthy and safe place to do it. Click here to apply to join one of our groups.
How To Push For A Radically Different Future
Bradford, Winthrop and the rest of the Pilgrims and Puritans weren’t pushing for the opportunity to invent iPhones or virtual conferences. They wanted freedom and liberty. Those conditions have to exist, so we can take risks and innovate.
I’m telling you this because, as my friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin says, there are “things that change” and “things that never change.” You can dream of either one, or both. But remember, some things change faster than others! At some point, it’ll happen for you too - you’re going to want to work on things that never change.
That’s one reason I lead masterminds online. I’ve run pawn shops and built custom homes in my previous businesses. It was fun, I learned a lot from it … but now I like helping people build their lives. I love watching them discover vision for their lives. We’ve been on a fantastic voyage these past two months, pursuing vision for life and business.
So whether you want to dream about things that change, or things that never change - be sure to do it in a like-minded community of authentic, transparent and vulnerable allies. Click here to visit our website and apply to join one of our mastermind groups for men or women.
