Let Me Tell You...

I needed to hear this! Heather Parady regularly shares engaging, thought-provoking, dare I say inspiring content for creatives on a consistent basis. But occasionally, I swear she’s listening to my every thought and speaking directly to me…(remember the “you’re so old, you’re new again” concept you shared a while back Heather?...I do!)

Well, she’s done it again.

My talk, “Casting a Vision for Modern Learning” is all about a big idea for the education world. And I don’t mean big as in popular, I mean big as in a heavy lift kind of idea. It tracks with Sir Ken Robinson’s idea that the American education system is not in need of reform, it is in need of a complete and total transformation. That is a HUGE idea!

I’ve given the talk a few times but as I was preparing to give it again on Tuesday of this week to the Southwestern Association of Episcopal Schools, I began to have little doubts creep into my brain. Doubts like “Is my thinking right?”, “Do others agree with me?”, “Do others really see it as I do?”, "Does my big idea resonate with at least a few folks or am I just an island of one?”, “Should I even be speaking about this?”. Then Heather says this about Kary Oberbrunner:

“As an entrepreneur, he gets that doing big things often means being misunderstood.”

And there it is again, just the words I need to hear. I think maybe Heather has deployed some sort of Facebook Ad-like brain scanning algorithmy thing where I just “think” something and suddenly she shares something that is exactly what I need to hear! I mean, my phone does it all the time with ads so why should I be surprised, right??!!??!!

The bottom line is that doing a big thing is complex which means it can be very hard for others to follow. Others don't have the ability to see inside your brain (unlike Heather!) to understand or "see" your big idea the way you do. And that’s ok. But don’t let that get in the way. Push forward. Think big. Explain big. Do big. Know that being misunderstood can be a positive sign of being in the game!.