“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

I remember how terrifying it was for me to throw in the towel at my big corporate job.

I was slowly rotting away. Dying of boredom with each passing meeting.

Each grind of coffee beans in the break room made me feel like a rat in the wheel.

Each “performance review” where my future salary and bonus would be dictated by my inept boss (who, it turns out was having an affair with one of our team members), felt like a dagger to the heart.

I remember my boss coming to me one day with a triumphant look on her face. She was accompanied by the “workplace psychologist” and they advanced on me like the Gestapo. In her hand, she held a 30 page report of my psychological assessment - an exercise that our whole department had been forced to do under the guise of “team building” to supposedly profile our personality types.

But I knew the real reason she was doing it.

I was in my twenties and my manager and I had been butting heads in a massive way. Her management career had spanned 4 decades working for the exact same company. She had fought and clawed her way to the C-suite and was known to be as tough as nails. Fear and intimidation was her management style, and she had more dirt on her fellow c-suite colleagues than a landfill.

I guess that explained why she had lasted so long, because it certainly wasn’t for her aspirational leadership style.

The three of us sat down.

“I’ll get straight to the point” said the workplace psychologist, with a look of fake concern. Based on your psychological profile it really doesn’t appear that you’re executive leadership material.” She paused to let her words sink in. “In fact, I’m extremely surprised that you’re working for any kind of corporation at all. Your profile is of someone who is an entrepreneur. You need to go and create your own thing. You’re a rule breaker, not a rule follower which obviously doesn’t sit well with this organization.”

To say I was ecstatic was an understatement, although I kept my poker face for the rest of the meeting. It was the affirmation I needed to make having my own business more than a pipe dream. In the months following I meticulously planned the creation of my marketing business.

But the problem was that it was just a plan. I hadn’t actually committed to it.

There’s a saying by Anais Nin that goes like this “and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” That’s exactly the pain level my misery had reached. I was making a significant 6 figure salary working for a company I had lost respect for. And it had become my hell.

I realized that I would never ever be ready to quit my outward looking perfect, high paying corporate job. Its safety net was what was keeping me anchored there. The only way out was if I cut my own hole.

So literally, one day I woke up and handed in my resignation. And I officially started my marketing agency the next day. No business plan. No marketing plan. Just burning fear. I was either going to swim or die trying, but either way it was better than being stuck in the purgatory hell of indecision.

And that’s how it is with any big decision we face in life. Once we commit, and jump in, boots and all - providence gets to work.

And somehow, someway, it all manages to work out even better than we could have imagined.`

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

What is the next big decision you’re faced with in your business?

What’s the net that’s suffocating you and how can you cut your hole?

Remember that whatever you do, you owe it to yourself, and to the world to play big - as big as you are capable of (which is bigger than you ever dreamed possible). To paraphrase the late, great Nelson Mandela let your own light shine, and by doing so you give others permission to let theirs shine too. There is no power in playing small.