As If I Were Great

"I am going to live the rest of my life as if I were a great man... I'm going to concentrate my life on the biggest ideals and ideas I can handle."

-- James Michener

James sounds like a charter member of the As If Club. Club. Motto: Fake It 'Till You Make It! Anyone can join at anytime -- all it takes is a change of attitude.

Most of us, however, spend our lives "playing small," as Marianne Williamson so famously put it. Instead of concentrating on the biggest and grandest parts of life, instead of owning our own greatness, we get by. We live in the shadows of the mountain top of human potential with our brethren who have silently agreed with us not to transcend the normal neurosis that passes for human life. Too bad.

Whether we are as successful as Michener was in the journey he chose to undertake, we really have nothing to lose, except our own limitations. If he had written one hundred books and none of them had become best sellers, he still would have been richer for the experience of having written them.

But your thing may not be writing. No matter. Their are thousands of ways to pursue the major ideas and the cosmic ideals. You must find your own path up the mountain, and it will, most likely, be very different from that of James Michener, or anyone else.

Michener made the above pronouncement at age 40, before he had written a single book. Whatever your age, it is never too late to live as if you were great. It is never too late to focus upon the biggest ideas and ideals you can handle. There is really only one perfect time to do anything -- now.