Promise the moon

Promise the moon

One frightening and effective way to motivate yourself is to make an
unreasonable promise—to go to someone you care about, either
personally or professionally, and promise them something really big,
something that will take all the effort and creativity you've got to make
happen.

When President John Kennedy promised that America would put a man
on the moon, the power of that thrilling promise alone energized all of
NASA for the entire time it took to accomplish the amazing feat. In his
book about the Apollo 13 mission, Lost Moon, astronaut Jim Lovell
called Kennedy's original promise "outrageous." But it showed how
effective being outrageous could be.

In his book Passion, Profit, and Power, Marshall Sylver recalls seeing a
billboard in Las Vegas put up by one of the casino owners who wanted
to become a non-smoker. The billboard read: "If You See Me Smoking
in the Next 90 Days, I'll Pay You $100,000!" Can you see the power in
that promise?

A couple of years ago I promised my children that I would send them to
camp in Michigan. They had been to the camp near Traverse City before, and loved it. When you live
during the year in Arizona, there's something magical about the water
and emerald forests of northern Michigan. It was an expensive camp,
but when I made the promise I was doing well financially, and I was
confident that they could all go.
Then as the summer neared I'd run short of money and had to rearrange
my priorities. My speaking schedule had replaced much of the
commissioned selling I was doing and it looked like camp might not be
in the picture.

I remember specifically talking to my boy Bobby, who was 8 years old
at the time, about how times were temporarily hard and how camp
didn't look like a good possibility any more this year. He was in the
front seat of the car and I'll never forget for as long as I live the look on
his face. He said very softly, so softly that I could barely hear him, "but
you promised."

He was right. I didn't say I'd try, I didn't say it was a goal, I promised.
And the feelings I had at that moment were so overwhelming that I
finally said to him, "Yes, I did promise. And because you reminded me
that it was a promise, I will say to you right now that you're going to
camp. I'll do what it takes. I'm sorry that I forgot it was a promise."

The first thing I did was change jobs, and my first condition on
accepting my new job was that my bonus for signing was the exact
amount of money it took to send my children to camp. It was done.

I'm reading: Promise the moon