Think Big

Belief thief

November 17, 2025

Here’s a fun game.

Pick someone who inspires you. Some well known person who you would love to emulate and who’s ‘awesomeness’ seems unattainable to you.

Got one? Great! Now go and find a long form interview with them. Now, don’t listen for entertainment, listen like a detective.

Listen to their story and the answers to the questions and dig beneath what they are saying. You are looking for key beliefs.

What do they beleive about themselves?

How do they see the world?

How do they talk about life? Is it a game, a challenge, a battle or a work of art?

How do they talk about themselves?

How do they view work?

What do they believe about productivity?

What is the most important thing to them in their work?

What are they hunting for?

Most often, they won’t overtly answer these, but you can infer the answers based on what they do say and how they say it. Sift through and find the gold.

You are deconstructing the belief structures that make them who they are and allow them to get the results they get.

Here’s the interesting part. Ask yourself this:

Where do my beliefs differ? What belief do they hold that yI do not? Is it one that is a cornerstone to their success?

Perhaps you see life as a battle, something to be survived. Perhaps they see life as a dance floor to be tangoed through.

Are you willing to try on new beliefs? Are you willing to adopt the structures that support them?

The pathway is laid out for you.

Be a belief thief.

Unusual results require unusual actions

November 16, 2025

If you want something not a lot of people get, you have to do things not a lot of people do.

If people look at you strangely for the things you do, you may well be on the right track.

Or not…

But of course you can’t know unless you try.

Let everyone else do what is normal; they are running millions of experiments for you that you are welcome to observe and learn from.

While they’re doing that, you may as well run some experiments of your own.

What remarkable result do you want to create in the world?

And what is the thing you will do that people will ‘remark’ upon? (Whether they are being judgy or not in their remarks doesn’t matter- it still fits the definition of remarkable!)

Dare to do things vastly differently and you will have a life vastly different to anyone else.

Some people are magnets

November 14, 2025

They make you smile, they make you feel heard and they make you want to shout “Heck yes!” when they share their vision for the world.

They aren’t magnetic because of any communication tricks or hacks- sure, they may have honed their craft, but theirs is an elementally magnetic core.

Where does it come from? Like most delicious meals, it’s a balance of all the good stuff.

Here are some of the raw materials:

A listener.

This person has the ability to deeply listen to people with both brain and heart.

A purpose.

This person has a burning purpose that will cut through anything. This might be a grand vision for change or something that leads them to hold down their corner of the world and enact the purpose daily.

Values

This person has a strong set of values. Values that make decisions for them.

We not me.

This person is not out for themselves. They understand that a win for you is a win for me. They know that there is no feeling greater than lifting up others.

Leverage.

This person makes big things happen with short conversations.

Abundance.

This person knows there is more than enough.

We need magnets in the world.

We need you to be one and we need you to create them.

When energy meets purpose

November 11, 2025

Goals are easy when you first set ‘em.

It’s exciting! It’s the 3rd of January and the new habits are going well!

Even better, people are watching! They see what you’re doing and that feels great!

I’m really interested in what keeps us going on the 3rd of August. When the habits are boring and no one is watching any more.

This is where the real magic starts to happen, but it’s also when our enthusiasm fades (if not way sooner).

There’s a lot out there to help with this; people like Simon Sinek talk about connecting to your why. I agree, your purpose is the driving force.

One thing I’m thinking about recently is how we come to our why. We can’t think about our why and expect it to instantly move us. We have to meet it with energy.

Have you slept enough?

Have you moved?

What are you eating?

Check all your fuel inputs- then check in with the why.

Our ultimate purpose will only energise if we meet it with that same zest first.

The scientist’s reframe

November 10, 2025

Scientists, engineers and architects know about this.

They know that to get anywhere we must experiment. And experimenting means that most of the time we aren’t getting the desired outcome.

So why is it so hard for us to come to grips with?

How can we make like a scientist with the endeavors of our lives?

How can we take joy in the process of figuring it out and discovering unexpected things along the way?

They do it. We can too.

Honour the ‘or’.

November 7, 2025

Here’s a belief we should be actively fostering in our younger generation:

If something hasn’t been done before it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It Just means it hasn’t been done before.

We can be forgiven for thinking that if something hasn’t happened so far then it won’t at all. After all, we use the past as evidence for what will happen right?

Sometimes.

And other times unprecedented things occur. Sometimes completely new things happen. Massive discoveries are made.

Breakthroughs are breakthroughs because they are breaking through what was once thought impossible.

The past does not equal the future. It might be the same as it was…

…or it might be vastly different.

We must honour the ‘or’.

We owe it to the younger generation to keep the door open to new possibilities.

We must take seriously the way in which our language might infer things that limit others.

If something hasn’t been done before it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It Just means it hasn’t been done before.

What is a teachers job?

November 6, 2025

Teachers are the ultimate Swiss army knives. They have a very practical job to do that also requires them to pour their personality and heart into the work. They’re a lot like actors in that sense.

At a minimum, as teachers we must plant the seeds of doubt.

Not the bad kind of doubt either- the generous kind.

We have to plant seeds that begin to pick apart the destructive narratives that can form in our kids’ heads. You know the ones:

Other people can, but I can’t.

I’m not good enough.

I shouldn’t take up space.

I’m dumb.

I’m too loud.

Yes- at a minimum our job is to day by day plant seeds. Seeds that say these stories belong in the trash of the fiction section of a library that’s at a dump.

An outstanding teacher? Well, they don’t stop at planting these seeds.

They not only remove these stories by creating doubt in them, but they create empowering alternatives.

They give mountains of evidence, anecdotes, experiences and unquestionable proof that they can have it all.

Create doubt to collapse that which disempowers and build a ocean of evidence that tells them the truth:

You can do anything.

Rehearsals build certainty

November 2, 2025

An actor in rehearsal is building the future.

You’ve heard of vision boards, right? Don’t lie I know you have one!

They seem kind of embarrassing when others see yours, but they are powerful visualisation tools. When I first heard of them I thought it was all a bit mystical, but the older I get the more I understand how important it is to see something before it exists.

To build a house you draw up the plans for it.

To take a road trip, you use a map to see and plan the journey.

I knew all this in theory, but I recently realised that the actor’s rehearsal process is also a visualisation exercise.

To get a desired outcome, we have to have a sense of certainty of what it will be like when you do it.

The first day of school is daunting because we can’t picture in our heads what it will actually be like- who will I sit next to? What do the classes look like? What will happen? (Sometimes we imagine it worse than it will be). We don’t have a store of images and experiences ahead of the first day of school, we can’t visualise it, therefore it’s a difficult experience before and possibly during.

The 513th day of school on the other hand, is a lot less daunting- or at the very least we know exactly what to expect.

An actor in rehearsal is laying the foundations and ruts of certainty.

“I will go here, I will do this and then this and then this. The audience will be there, the lights will be there and then I go backstage and have 7 minutes to get changed, have a drink and get the rubber chicken.”

Without this methodical and gradual process, actors don’t have the certainty they can perform at their peak come curtain.

When I think forward to 3 months from now when we’re remounting a show I tour in the US, I get zero nerves because I have laid hundreds of ruts of certainty. I can visualise exactly what it will be like.

So a fun game I’m playing is to create that level of internal certainty for things I don’t yet have in my life.

I think this is what the vision boards are all about. If we can make our desired realities as clear, as vivid and as real as our actual realities, we’re a heck of a lot more likely to get them.

The Gene Wilder one

October 31, 2025

Abundance is magnetic.

My favourite people ooze a sense that there is more than enough of everything:

More than enough time, more than enough resources, more than enough opportunities, more than enough love- everything!

Abundance is the best.

And if the sentiment of “if you believe something is true, then so it is”- abundance is at our finger tips at any moment.

We always have a choice to orient ourselves to abundance. To communicate effectively with those we lead and love that there is more than enough. That the world is bountiful and it’s opportunities are awaiting you.

We don’t have to go out and change things to make this so. To quote Gene Wilder as the chocolate maker, “if you want to view paradise simply look around and view it.”

Go on, be one of my favourite people.

View the paradise around you.

Playing for keeps

October 30, 2025

It’s not what you achieve, it’s who you become in the process.

This is one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned. It seems like a cute concept, but in practice it’s powerful.

For me it’s the idea of playing for keeps.

That means when you go after a big audacious goal, face your fears or push yourself beyond what you thought was possible, the real treasure at the end is who you are.

The person who tries and fails 1000 times is a cool person.

So is the person who has hundreds of difficult conversations.

Who you are on the other side of the big scary impossible is the thing you want, not the big scary impossible itself.

Playing for keeps makes you undeniable to yourself.

Playing for keeps is stepping up to a new challenge, looking back to all you’ve gone through to get here and thinking to yourself “this challenge ain’t seen nothing yet- it hasn’t met me”

This is all just for you, by the way.

Playing for keeps isn’t for others, so don’t bother trying to tell them. It’s about what you think about you.

And you get to keep it forever.

JUSTIN ROGERS

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