I have been thinking a lot lately about the day my ego died.  I mean, we all have an ego.  That part of us that doesn’t want to be embarrassed.  Doesn’t want to look like we don’t know the answer.  Cares about what other people think of us.

But somewhere along the way, I cared a little less about what the world expected of me and a little more about what I expected of myself.

Author David J. Schwartz writes in The Magic of Thinking Big, “How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.”

How you think when you lose.

Do you feel outraged?  Unfairly judged?  Exasperated?  Or do you pick yourself back up and ask, “What did I learn?  How could I have done it differently?  What can I do to improve?”

Successful people experiment a lot.  Fail countless times.  Most overnight success stories are usually decades in the making.

Author of Bold, Chairman of the X Prize Foundation and Co-Founder of Singularity University, Peter Diamandis, said, “Before it’s a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.”

A crazy idea.  Something scoffed at as impossible.  But crazy ideas mixed with action change the world.  If you are strong enough to move forward when everyone else thinks it’s a waste of time.

This is how we got to the moon, secured voting rights for women, created electric cars and started surfing the internet.

Can we take a moment to tell our ego to stand down so that we can stand up for something we believe in?  Can we add action to an idea and see what kind of magic happens next?

As Steve Jobs once said, “Here’s to the crazy ones.  The misfits.  The rebels.  The troublemakers.  The round pegs in the square holes.  The ones who see things differently.  They’re not fond of rules.  And they have no respect for the status quo.  You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.  About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.  Because they change things.  They push the human race forward.  While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.  Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”