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**Byte-sized**
Welcome to your weekly byte-sized wisdom, where I bring you 1 valuable insight in 90 seconds or less.
Word count: 368 | Processing time: 90 s
I had coffee this week with a founder I really admire.
We were talking about the vision for his company, where he serves as CTO, where the technology is headed and what it could become.
As he spoke, I found myself nodding along, asking more probing questions, wondering how truly deep his vision would go. I thought I understood the scope of what he was describing, but boy was I wrong.
When he talks about "vision," and when I talk about "vision," we are operating on completely different scales.
His baseline assumption about what's possible is about three levels above what I even consider ambitious. My version of "thinking big" was his version of "thinking realistically."
It was like discovering I had been playing checkers while he was playing 3D chess.
You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
A famous Jim Rohn quote, that I think goes deeper than just the average.
The people you surround yourself with calibrate your sense of what's possible.
If everyone in your circle thinks a million-dollar business is huge, then $1M becomes your ceiling. If everyone around you is building $100M companies, suddenly $1M feels like just getting started.
Naval Ravikant calls this “playing different games”: Most people are playing the wrong game because they don’t even know what game is available to them.
Here’s what made me uncomfortable: I realized that the trait of “always being pragmatic” was working against me.
I never gave myself the chance to actually explore how much higher the ceiling in my life goes.
After that coffee, I’ve started to wonder: “What would it look like if I took the risk that seems 10x bigger than what I’m comfortable with?”
Not because going 10x bigger is the right answer right now, but because I’m forcing myself to think from a different altitude.
If your failures aren’t scaring you a little, your successes probably aren’t either.
Go out and find that someone whose casual conversations make you slightly uncomfortable about the scope of your own ambitions.
Then spend more time with them and live in that discomfort.
Your 10 might just be their 3. And that’s exactly the point.
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