Mark: Alright Michelle, I'm going to say the title of a book, and you give me your gut-reaction, one-liner roast. Ready? Dream Big. Michelle: Okay... Dream Big. Sounds like the title of a motivational poster in a dentist's office that you stare at while trying to ignore the sound of the drill. Mark: (Laughs) That is painfully accurate. And I think the author would probably love that. Today we are diving into Dream Big: Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You’re Going to Do About It by Bob Goff. And he is not your typical motivational guru. Michelle: What makes him different? The name Bob Goff has this almost mythic quality in certain circles. People talk about him with this incredible enthusiasm. Mark: Exactly. For starters, he calls himself a "recovering lawyer." He had a successful law firm for decades and then just... quit. He decided his full-time job would be encouraging people. And this book isn't just theory; it grew out of these incredibly popular workshops he runs, also called "Dream Big." So it's been road-tested with thousands of people. Michelle: A "recovering lawyer." I like that. It immediately tells you he’s someone who has actually made a huge, scary leap himself, not just telling others to do it from a comfortable armchair. That feels like a good place to start.

Mark: It’s the perfect place to start, because his first big idea completely flips our conventional script on what you need to succeed. He tells this powerful story about his two teaching jobs. On one hand, he's an adjunct professor at a prestigious law school, Pepperdine. His students are brilliant, ambitious, they have every opportunity in the world. Michelle: The best and the brightest. The ones who are supposed to have it all figured out. Mark: Precisely. But then he also teaches a class at San Quentin State Prison, to inmates, many of whom are serving life sentences. And he makes this stunning observation. He says, "Ironically, the guys with the life sentences often seem to be living freer lives than the law students with all the opportunities." Michelle: Hold on. That sounds profound, but my skeptical side is kicking in. Is he romanticizing prison? What on earth does he mean by 'freer'? They are literally not free. Mark: It’s a great question, and it’s the core of his argument. He’s not talking about physical freedom. He’s talking about a kind of internal, psychological freedom. He says the inmates’ brokenness—the fact that their lives had completely fallen apart—forced them to become brutally honest with themselves. They had no one left to impress, no image to maintain. They had to figure out who they really were, deep down. Michelle: Ah, I see. So the law students are still performing. They're playing the role of "future successful lawyer," wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, but maybe they haven't had that moment of reckoning. They're trapped by the weight of all those expectations. Mark: Exactly. They are trapped by their own potential. Goff has this other fantastic metaphor for it. He says our lives are like a disorganized closet. We spend our whole lives acquiring things—experiences, knowledge, emotions, relationships—and we just throw them in there. Everything in the closet was important enough to keep, but because there's no order, it's just an impenetrable pile of debris. The individual items have value, but collectively, they're worthless because you can't access them. Michelle: That is an uncomfortably good metaphor. It’s like an un-defragmented hard drive. All the data is there, but it’s so scattered that the system runs incredibly slowly. You can't find anything. Mark: And that’s his point. The inmates, through their brokenness, were forced to clean out the closet. They had to sit in their cells and sort through every single thing, every memory, every mistake. The law students hadn't been forced to do that yet. Their closets were still a mess. Michelle: So the first step to dreaming big isn't to add more dreams to the pile. It's to stop and organize what's already there. To figure out who you are beneath all the stuff you've accumulated. Mark: Yes. And to discard the things that are untrue. He talks about how in his high school yearbook, a dozen people wrote "Never change." He says it's the worst advice he ever received. We are supposed to change. We're supposed to become kinder, humbler, more authentic versions of ourselves. And that only happens when you do the hard work of sorting through the closet. Michelle: It’s about giving yourself permission to not be the person you were yesterday, or the person everyone expects you to be. That feels like the real "freedom" he's talking about. Mark: That’s it exactly. It’s the freedom from pretense. And once you have that, you can start asking the real questions: Who are you? Where are you? And what do you actually want?

Michelle: Okay, so that process of sorting the closet and getting honest sounds essential, but also... daunting. Once you've done that, what's next? Do you just start tacking new ambitions onto the wall? Mark: This is where Goff gets really interesting and, I think, quite radical. He says the next step isn't to add something new. It's to quit something old. Michelle: Quit? That word has such a negative connotation. We're taught that quitters never win. Mark: And he wants to reclaim it. His argument is that our lives are already full. You can't pour anything new into a full cup. To make space for a big dream, you have to consciously remove something else. He uses this incredible story from his sailing experience. Michelle: I’m listening. I love a good sailing metaphor. Mark: He was racing a sailboat across the Pacific, a long, grueling journey. At one point, he noticed a long strand of kelp trailing behind the boat. He figured it would fall off. But days turned into weeks, and the boat just felt... sluggish. He couldn't figure out why. They were doing everything right, but they were losing speed. It wasn't until they sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, at the very end of the race, that he realized the kelp was still there, wrapped around the keel—the deep, underwater fin of the boat. He had dragged it across the entire ocean. Michelle: Oh, I know that feeling. That's like having 50 browser tabs open in your brain. You don't even realize how much processing power they're taking up, but you just feel slow and foggy. The 'kelp' is all the little obligations, the half-finished projects, the mental clutter. Mark: That's the perfect analogy. The kelp is all the stuff we accumulate that slows us down. Old commitments, draining relationships, unproductive habits, limiting beliefs. And Goff says we need to regularly "back the boat down"—put it in reverse—to shake the kelp off the keel. Michelle: Okay, that makes sense conceptually. But what does that look like in practice? Quitting sounds so dramatic. He's not telling people to just walk out of their jobs on a whim, is he? Mark: Not at all. It’s about being strategic. He gives some of his own examples. He quit a position on a board of an organization he loved because it was taking up too much headspace. He quit his own law firm. He even quit making appointments on his calendar, deciding to be more available and spontaneous. But he also gives a very simple, actionable starting point. Michelle: Please, I need something simple. Mark: He suggests you quit one thing. Every Thursday. Michelle: Every week? That sounds... chaotic. How do you decide what to quit without completely derailing your life? Mark: It doesn't have to be huge. It could be quitting a subscription you don't use. Quitting the habit of checking your email first thing in the morning. Quitting the "clothes chair"—you know, the one where you pile clothes instead of putting them away. Michelle: I am personally attacked by the clothes chair example. But I get it. It's about building the muscle of letting go. Of proving to yourself that you have agency over your own life and schedule. Mark: Exactly. It's about clearing the path. Because you can have the most beautiful dream in the world, but if the path to it is choked with kelp, you'll never get there. You have to be a quitter to be a dreamer.

Michelle: Okay, so we've cleared the mental clutter by getting honest with ourselves. We've quit the things dragging us down and shaken the kelp off the keel. The boat is clean. Now what? Where do we sail? Mark: Now comes the scary part. You have to actually point the boat toward the horizon and go, even if there's a storm brewing. This is the final stage for Goff: taking action, especially when it's terrifying. He has a phrase for this state of being: "living on the edge of yikes." Michelle: (Laughs) "The edge of yikes." I love that. It's so much better than "stepping out of your comfort zone." It's visceral. Mark: It is, and it comes from a very real, very visceral place for him. He tells this story about his humanitarian work in Mogadishu, Somalia, one of the most dangerous places on earth. He's there to help start schools. He's in an armored SUV, driving through streets pockmarked with bullet holes from decades of civil war. Michelle: This already sounds like 'yikes'. Mark: It gets worse. Suddenly, on a narrow street, another car cuts them off. His driver freezes. The armed guards in the truck ahead of them immediately open fire. For a moment, he's in the middle of a firefight, with no idea what's happening or if he's about to die. And the only word that comes to his mind is, "Yikes." Michelle: Wow. That is... not a metaphor. That's real, life-or-death 'yikes'. My heart is pounding just hearing that. But why is that state—that terror—so important for him? Most of us spend our entire lives trying to avoid 'yikes'. Mark: Because of the insight he had in that moment. He writes, "Comfortable people don’t need Jesus, desperate people do." And we can broaden that beyond a specific faith. Comfortable people don't grow. Comfortable people don't chase their ambitions. Comfortable people don't change the world. Complacency is the enemy of every great dream. Michelle: So the 'yikes' is a sign that you're in the right place? That you're actually moving and doing something that matters? Mark: It's a sign that you're alive. It's the feeling of your faith, or your courage, actually being tested. He argues that we were born to be brave, and bravery isn't the absence of fear; it's acting in the face of it. It's choosing to live on that razor's edge between terror and exhilaration. That's where the real work gets done. Michelle: It reminds me of his other story, about learning to pick a lock. He failed at jumping a dirt bike, he failed at hot-wiring a car, but he succeeded at picking the lock because he had to be sensitive. He had to feel the pins, to have a delicate touch. Maybe 'yikes' isn't about reckless action, but about highly focused, sensitive action under pressure. Mark: That's a brilliant connection. It’s not about being an adrenaline junkie. It's about having the courage to apply that 'lock picker's touch' to the ambitions that scare you the most. It's the moment you stop just dreaming and start doing.

Michelle: So when you put it all together, it's a three-step process, really. First, get brutally honest with yourself, even if it takes being broken to do it. That's cleaning the closet. Second, clear the decks by quitting the 'kelp' that's holding you back. And third, point the ship toward something that scares you a little... or a lot. You have to sail toward 'yikes'. Mark: Exactly. It's about trading the illusion of safety for the reality of a life in motion. Goff has this great final analogy from his flight training. He talks about a phenomenon called "ground effect," where a plane can hover just a few feet off the runway, supported by a cushion of air. It feels like you're flying, but you're not really going anywhere. You're safe, but you're stuck. Michelle: And that's where most of our dreams live, isn't it? Hovering in ground effect. We've done the research, made the plan, but we never actually commit to landing. Mark: That's his whole point. He's telling us to stop hovering. Pitch the nose forward and get the wheels on the ground. Take the action. Land the ambition. Even if the landing is bumpy. Michelle: I think that's a perfect takeaway. Maybe the challenge for everyone listening isn't to go to Somalia, but to identify one piece of 'kelp' in their life. What's one small thing you could quit this Thursday to make space for a dream? Mark: That's a great challenge. And it doesn't have to be dramatic. Just one small act of quitting to make room for one small act of doing. We'd love to hear what you come up with. Find us on our socials and share the one thing you're quitting to dream bigger. Michelle: Let us know what kelp you're shaking off. I'm genuinely curious. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.