I have a superpower that has helped me be successful. I’m about to give you that superpower too.

I could give it to you in the first sentence, but I like a little build up, so bear with me. (If you’re the “Skip to the good part” kind of person, just scroll down to the last big quote text. Although you might find it silly if you don’t see the ‘why’ behind it, at which point, if you don’t take it seriously, you won’t get the superpower… but the choice is yours.)

In motivational courses, there’s a saying, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll end up among the stars.”

In marketing, there’s a saying, “Your focus determines your reality.”

In common wisdom, there’s the saying, “Don’t make mountains out of molehills, turn your mountains into molehills.”

It’s also often found that the more “Big Picture” a person is, the more likely they are to succeed.

Well, my life has been a rags to riches story (one I won’t go into right now), suffice to say that at one point in my life, I had to sleep on the couches of friends to survive, and now I own my own yacht. I don’t say this to brag and I’m not trying to sell you a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. I’m only saying it to show that I have some experience with succeeding. Also, I’m not going to tell you how to get rich. This is much deeper and more powerful than money.

This superpower derives one one of the secrets from motivation and success.

Have a big goal.

Having a big goal, a grand purpose to your life, is probably the most crucial thing in life. The bigger the goal, the better, because the bigger it is, the more things you will instinctively take into account when making decisions in life; the more complex scenarios you’re likely to try to figure out, the more likely you are to reach across conventional lines because it’s all just pieces of something bigger. A big goal is also empowering, because, when its your life’s goal, you become that goal. It invigorates you, and other problems become smaller by comparison. And when you break that big goal down into smaller pieces, it becomes more manageable, and you begin to feel like someone who’s actually capable of taking on such a goal.

Even ‘large’ goals, if they’re part of your big goal, feel more attainable when they’re part of something bigger. For example, “Rescue the princess” feels like a massive task that a whole fantasy novel would revolve around. However, here’s a better storyline: “Stop the war. To do that we need to rescue the princess, stop the enemy commander, and make peace with the mystical hippo-people.” At this point, instead of envisioning an entire book being spend saving the princess, it feels like a side-note, a lead-up. Now you might expect it to take maybe the first third of the book. Even if it’s the same princess, saving the princess feels like a much simpler task, much more attainable and less intimidating, which are feelings that are key components to succeeding in the task.

Now, like Matroshka Dolls, you can go further.

Matroshka dolls are an interesting toy from Russia. The smallest doll is contained in a larger doll. That is in a larger doll, and so on. Hypothetically, you could go on forever making larger and larger Matroska dolls until they collapse under their own gravity.

So, back to our example fantasy story…

Stop the war (Save the princess. Stop the Commander. Ally with Hippo People). What if we wrap it in a bigger goal still?

Let’s save the world.

Okay, so now imagine a larger story still. Say the world is facing Lovecraftian invading Elder Gods who are seeking to destroy it. We have to save the world. To do that, the war has to be stopped to form an alliance between the various countries must be made. Capturing an Elder God should happen to research it. Portals must be closed.
So now we have Save the world (Capture Elder God, Close Portals, Stop the War to Form Alliance(Save the Princess. Stop the Commander. Ally with Hippo People).

At this point, saving the princess feels almost trivial. Our story feels it might spend a chapter on it, at most. Heck, the hero of our story probably won’t even fall in love with her, she’s more likely to be an temporary side character. Same princess, same hero, different goal. Saving the Princess feels like nothing now. It may even just be tacked onto one of his other goals. Our hero may focus on allying with the hippo-people first and then use them to help save the princess. He may defeat the commander and then just waltz into the princess’s holding cells as the power structure crumbles that’s keeping her there. If he was JUST saving the princess, he’d probably run in sword-swinging and get heavily wounded in the process.

And that confidence, that drive, outside-the-box thinking, and that desire to move forward that a larger goal provides will help the hero of our story save the princess all the quicker.

This is because the human mind creates narratives, and works by them.

And we can exploit that.

The bigger the narrative, the simpler the component tasks will feel.

The point, if you want to succeed, your goals should be Matroshka’d as far as possible. Or in other words:

To go big, you have to think even bigger.

So, what’s my superpower? I have one of the biggest goals of them all. I highly suspect I might actually be the most ambitious person on the face of the planet… well, at least until everyone else who reads this that decides to share in my goals joins in; but that potential title and point of personal pride means nothing to me compared to actually pursuing my final goal, and the more people that share my goal, the more likely it is to succeed. (Seriously, look at that right there for an example of how a large goal affects you… I have a personal pride point that may actually be top in world at something, and I’m able to toss it aside for something bigger. Most people would latch onto an identity point like that with an iron vice, but my goals are literally too big to be bothered with petty things like personal pride.)

My goal is this:

I want to prevent the heat death of the universe and defeat death itself.

The first part is actually a matroshka doll inside the second part, but I felt it was important enough to include in my goal itself. Because even if people lived ‘forever’, the universe itself has a time limit on it, so that must be prevented as well, and it helps keep in scope how big of an issue truly defeating death itself is too, and the scale on which I want to defeat it.

So, breaking down along those lines, there are multiple things that can end the universe, but the heat death of the universe is the last known big threat. It’s expected to happen after the big rip, and after the temporal fall-off which are two other expected ends-of-the-universe, which means to prevent the heat death of the universe, I have to stop those too. I’ll also need to figure out a way to pump new cycles of energy across reality on a universal scale. (See what’s happening? I’m already breaking down the line of Matroshka dolls and literally breaking a universe-scale problem into more manageable parts. In fact, I’ve gone through it MUCH further than that.

Here’s a rough partial outline of my breakdown to defeat death itself and prevent the heat death of the universe, all the way down to how it’s going to get me through my work day tomorrow.

Now, this is just a simplified breakdown (the full tree is MUCH larger than the pruned down version shown here, feel free to take time to look through what’s there though), and feel free to imagine how it could get broken down further, how areas untouched on may break down, etc.

It starts of with ridiculously “impossible” goals. Defeating death, stopping the heat death of the universe, immortality, etc. But they get broken down all the way into small managable chunks like “Make it through the next work day.” And in the context of this whole grand plan, making it through the next work day seems pretty simple and minor task, and the big task (saving everything and everyone) seems actually doable when broken down that far.

So, that’s the super power. You, too, can now share in the most ambitious goal in the world to help you get through the next day, make all of your daily problems seem small an manageable.

In fact… they say a superhero is judged by the villains they face off against. Supporting this goal, defeating death itself on a universal scale… well, even superman looks kind of pitiful by comparison. So you’re amazing. Even Superman, one of the greatest superheroes of imagination, pales before how great as the superhero you can now be in reality.