The magic of thinking big

Imagine you’re a 22-year-old kid living in Belfast, a tiny city in a tiny country in a big bad world that’s never heard of you. The big web conferences ignore your town because, well, they’re too busy being big and hitting-up the big cities. So what do you do? Suck it up like the rest of us and accept the small town life of a small time kid? Or stick it to big conferences and hold an even bigger one?

If you haven’t heard of Andy McMillan, you will. He’s that kid that’s holding that conference in Belfast this week and he’s calling it Build. It’s got a better line-up than any web developer event I’ve ever heard of, anywhere in the world.

Andy has absolutely no right to run Build: he’s never held a conference in his life, he’s only out of college and he’s a “nobody”. But Andy thought big—really big—and did it anyway.

All too often we’re sabotaged by our less-than-fantastic self-belief. We’re not smart enough, not brave enough, too young, too old, not funny, funny looking, can’t write, can’t design… All of these little doubts swim about our conscious and hold us back.

There’s a corny-but-still-worth-a-read book by the same title of this post written by David J. Schwartz. Schwartz advises:

Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.

The idea that thinking big and believing in yourself can help you succeed is so clichéd and obvious that I feel awkward writing a post about it. Yet I don’t know a single ambitious person that couldn’t benefit from taking that advice seriously.

Your Build might be a great agency, a successful web app or it might be speaking at major event or meeting your hero. Whatever it is, don’t be held back by your self-doubt because there’s an Andy McMillan somewhere that’ll happily do it before you.