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Think BIG - A Lesson from a Little One

Written by: Lee Colan

Article Overview: Like most of us, I learned about the mechanics of goal setting early in my career. Although I learned the theory of goal setting in graduate school, it wasn’t until later in my career that I learned about the powerful psychology goal setting and how imbedding goals into the walls of our mind unleashes the real power. But it was only a few years ago that I experienced first-hand the power of thinking big… and it came at the hands of someone quite small. My oldest daughter was seven at the time. She loved to play catch with Dad. The object we threw - a tennis balls, football, one of those squishy balls - mattered little, but the challenge of consecutive catches matter very much to her.

Think BIG - A Lesson from a Little One

Like most of us, I learned about the mechanics of goal setting early in my career. Although I learned the theory of goal setting in graduate school, it wasn’t until later in my career that I learned about the powerful psychology goal setting and how imbedding goals into the walls of our mind unleashes the real power.

But it was only a few years ago that I experienced first-hand the power of thinking big… and it came at the hands of someone quite small. My oldest daughter was seven at the time. She loved to play catch with Dad. The object we threw - a tennis balls, football, one of those squishy balls - mattered little, but the challenge of consecutive catches matter very much to her.

There was always the same goal, and only one goal, when we played catch – to break the existing records for consecutive catches.

I remember one day my focused little daughter said, “Dad, let’s try for 100 in a row.”

Since our best at that point was 50 I kind of politely chuckled and said, “Sure honey.” A few days later, we did it!

So, next she said, “Dad let’s go for 300 in a row.”

Well, my daughter was learning about thinking big, but I still had a lot to learn. I thought to myself, “Gee, we just hit 100. Why not try to 125 or maybe 150 in a row? But 300?!” Of course, out loud I responded with another uneasy chuckle and a “Sure honey.”


You guessed it. It was only a few days later that we hit 300 catches in a row. I was really impressed and quite content. My daughter was neither impressed nor content, but she was a lot smarter than I. “Dad, let’s go for 500 now!”

And to myself I thought, “You have GOT to be kidding me!”

Sure enough, that very same day, we caught 500 throws in a row. You’d think I would be a believer by now, but when her sparkling eyes looked at me and said, “Dad, let’s go for 1,000 in a row!” I am embarrassed to admit that my internal response was the same.

Less than 24 hours later we hit our current record – 1,017 catches in a row!

Our record was over 10 times bigger that I had originally thought we could achieve. Thanks to my seven year old daughter, I have finally learned to think BIG.

We are only as big, powerful, lucky or successful as we think we are. What are you thinking about now?

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Article Tags: believer, dad, existing records, few days, goal setting, graduate school, little daughter, mechanics, psychology, sparkling eyes, squishy balls, tennis balls



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