Elevating People's Sights

One of the most important things we can do as a parent, mentor or friend to others is to help them imagine possibilities and think bigger.

One of the most important things we can do as a parent, mentor or friend to others is to elevate their sights, to help them think bigger or about possibilities they’d never imagined.

Economist Tyler Cowen wrote a short post on the high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations. He talked about how when impressive people applied to the masters program at his school, he would offer them admission to the doctoral program as well, and suggest that they pursue that route. He writes:

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.

This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life.

Cowen also asked Paul Graham, founder of the prestigious Y Combinator Silicon Valley accelerator about this in a podcast they did together.

Graham: People are, for various reasons — for multiple reasons — they’re afraid to think really big. There are multiple reasons. One, it seems overreaching. Two, it seems like it would be an awful lot of work.

As an outside person, I’m like an instructor in some fitness class. I can tell someone who’s already working as hard as they can, “All right, push harder.”

It doesn’t cost me any effort. Surprisingly often, as in the fitness class, they are capable of pushing harder. A lot of my secret is just being the person who doesn’t have to actually do the work that I’m suggesting they do.

Graham goes on to talk about how one of Y Combinator’s major value adds is helping people think bigger about their idea.

Back to this idea, though, of how to get people to be more ambitious. It’s not just introducing them to other ambitious people. There is a skill to blowing up ideas, blowing up not in the sense of destroying, like making them bigger. There is a skill to it, to take an idea and say, “Okay, so here’s an idea. How could this be bigger?” There is somewhat of a skill to it.

…

The weird thing about YC interviews is, in a sense, they’re a negotiation. In a negotiation, you’re always saying, “Oh, I’m not going to pay a lot for that. It’s terrible. It’s worthless.” Yet in YC interviews, the founders often walk out thinking, “Wow, our idea is a lot better than we thought,” just because of what we do.

Camden Spiller, owner of Maddox Industrial Transformer, a high growth enterprise that’s been on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America for several years in a row makes the same point about Christian business owners thinking bigger about their companies. As I wrote about Spiller in my book Life in the Negative World:

According to Spiller, they’re working hard toward a goal of $1 billion in annual revenue. He thinks more Christian business owners should develop an expanded vision for what they can accomplish. As he put it, “You don’t have to just be Mom and Pop to hold true to your values.”

The impact of elevating people’s sights can be transformational for their lives. In response to my essay on choosing the right ladders to climb, Jon Stokes posted:

From the south, went to LSU for undergrad (EE major, math minor), wanted to do a humanities thing for grad school. So I went to see a professor who had taken an interest in me.

I had this professor for an honors class, and he was the chair of the philosophy department at the time & after that he really took an interest in me, so he would recruit me to take his other honors classes, which I did.

When I was a senior I went to see him for his advice on the type of humanities program I should apply to and to get some recommendations of schools I should look at, maybe in religious studies (which I had an interest in).

So the first things out of his mouth were, "Have you considered Harvard or Princeton? They have good programs in religion."

I went into a state of mild shock. No, I had not in fact considered any schools in that tier. I seriously thought he was going to suggest I check out some list of middle or lower tier state schools or obscure liberal arts colleges. So I was like, "Hold up... this is possible? For me?"

But this guy was the department head, and he had taught me in a number of classes, and he knew my work, so when he said I could do this, I believed him. I was like, "Ok, well... I guess that's what's up, then."

I applied to both those schools, and I got into them, and got to pick which one, and I got two advanced degrees there, then went on for a PhD at U Chicago.

If this one professor hadn't suggested I could do this, I wouldn't have even tried. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. Not even on the radar.

I hope to be that guy for someone else, one day.

Again, this doesn’t have to be about getting into the Ivy League. It could be asking someone who is only thinking about local colleges, “Have you ever thought about going to school out of state?”

So many people sell themselves short. Even when we do achieve something, we often end up with “impostor syndrome,” thinking we don’t really deserve it or belong there. And some people just don’t know about the possibilities they should be exploring.

I personally received little to nothing of this in my life. And it cost me. One exception: An older pastor did one time tell me I should go to seminary and become a pastor. Now, I didn’t do that. But it put a possibility in my head that had ever been there before.

I don’t think we have to be like fitness instructors and push people to do more than they want, though that might be appropriate in some cases as with our children.

But I do think all of us should make a practice of looking for how we can expand the possibilities those around us can imagine, particularly in elevating their sights in terms of what it is they think they can do or accomplish. The potential value to them is enormous.

Cover image: Tyler Cowen from Politics and Prose Bookstore, CC BY-SA 2.0