#NoSmallDreams

I use this hashtag in my correspondence every time I mention a Really Audacious Goal. Since I have a whole bunch of Really Audacious Goals when it comes to this whole writing thing, our team sees #NoSmallDreams A LOT.

#NoSmallDreams is intended to remind everyone, especially me, to ignore “the odds”–because in my heart of hearts, I really don’t believe in odds: I believe that Hard Work + Divine Alignment= Miracles.

(Please don’t be impressed by my “faith”. I feel this way because I’ve experienced so many miracles in the past years. If faith is the evidence of things unseen, my statement is much more fact than faith.)

So. How did I find myself standing in front of all my “real job” sales colleagues last week, listening to my boss give me—ME???—a lecture that should have been titled: “Dream Bigger, Reba!”

Good question.

I’d just made projections, and the figures were conservative. Hey, he said to be realistic!

The steam pouring from my boss’s ears informed me that I’d been a tad too realistic.

I was wearing my most excellent business suit to give my most informed projections on a most professional Powerpoint screen…and somehow I still managed to get dressed down like a teenager caught smoking behind the dumpsters?

This could have been a really bad moment, had I not started to laugh. (Internally! External laughter would have been both wildly inappropriate and a quick ticket to the HR office.)

I laughed inside because I realized that I don’t dream big at work.

Dreaming big can get you fired, so at work, I dream SAFE.

Which made me wonder…what else am I dreaming safe about? Where else am I afraid to have audacious goals? And how big would I dream if I wasn’t afraid?

These are questions I’m still answering, because dreaming big is scary.

But it doesn’t really matter. Because the one thing scarier than dreaming big is failing to dream at all.