Playing Big

When I was a kid, my bookshelf was lined with the stories of men who lived at the edge of human possibility—Chuck Yeager, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin. They were my first definition of “adventurer.”

Boyhood adventure and dreams of exploration.

I re-watched the movie First Man this weekend and it stirred an old feeling in me again. There’s a quiet moment in the film where Armstrong, home after a day of intense work, sits studying into the night while his kids play nearby. I make up this is extra time he was spending. More effort applied. It’s not for a promotion. It’s not for applause. It’s because the mission demanded it. The goal he and his team were chasing required it.

It reminded me of my own past. In the Army, I’d come home and keep working. I'd write operations orders, build plans and flush out ideas on the whiteboard, and I rehearse briefings. I willingly traded social time for this growth. Leading Soldiers demanded it. The mission required it. I craved it. That same focus feels more distant now.

The Apollo astronauts weren’t trying to be “the best” in a relative sense. They were attempting the unprecedented. Men were dying. The problems were complex, the stakes impossible to overstate. Playing big was their default setting. That was the only way they could achieve their impossible vision.

So I asked myself: What does playing big look like for me now?

Better yet, who do I need to be...now... in order to become a world-class executive coach by age 50? To build companies and serve in public office? To create financial independence and provide my daughters with a life full of love, possibility, and security? And, perhaps most importantly, to continue to be in a marriage that the wife and I constantly brag about?

Here’s the truth: none of that will happen without the same determination I read about in those adventurers like the Apollo Astronauts. It will require saying “no” to distractions and “yes” to the long game.

So, I am left with a poignant and yet simple question tied to a tougher answer:

If you’re not playing big now… what will it take to start?