In moving toward your dream, it’s necessary to take the lid off the jar. Far too many of us let our age, race, sex, or economic background hold us down and restrict us from dreaming big. But you can’t allow yourself to be held down by what your parents did or the limitations in your immediate environment. You have to take the lid off of your expectations and dream big.
Have you ever looked at what happens to a flea when you put it in a jar? The flea jumps only high enough so that its head no longer hits the lid. If those fleas in the jar have baby fleas, the baby fleas are born with the same vertical ability to jump two hundred times their size. However, because they are in an environment where they only see other fleas jumping so as not to hit their heads, they begin to duplicate the behavior in their environment. You can’t concern yourself or try to duplicate the action of others around you. You were clearly created and destined to climb, jump, and soar two hundred times your size and even greater.
How often do we allow the impressions of others to affect our direction, our altitude, or our ability? Far too many times we have stunted our own growth, and we have impeded our leap because of the opinions of others. How often do we stop our own progress because we looked to the left or to the right, and based our actions on someone else’s ability? Don’t get caught in that trap of comparing yourself to someone else. Release yourself from excuses and limitations.
Just like a flea, we are all born with the ability to take huge, vertical leaps. Yet slowly but surely, we let the neighborhood we grew up in or our family’s social or economic background affect how high we jump. We become just like those fleas in a jar, and we let our surroundings stop us from reaching our maximum potential. Some of us have been so conditioned to being in the jar of our limitations that, when the lid is finally taken off, we don’t know how to dream big. We can’t imagine that we deserve anything better than what we already have. But you know what? We were created to live beyond our current jar, regardless of our age, sex, race, or ability. We were designed to jump so high and so hard that we can literally break the lid off wherever we are.
I remember the first time I had a lid put on my limitations. I was in sixth grade, and my teacher asked everyone in the class to write on a piece of paper what they wanted to be when they grew up. Everybody started writing, and I got excited. I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I got older—I wanted to be on TV. I wrote that down on my paper and turned it in. The teacher started calling our names and reading aloud what we wrote. I couldn’t wait for her to call me.
When the teacher finally got to my name, she said, “Little Stevie, stand up and come to the front of the room.” As I started walking to the front of the class, I just knew I had written something so deep and powerful that she wanted me to share it with everybody. I was a poor kid with hand-me-down clothes and a stuttering problem. This was my chance to show them all what Little Stevie was made of.
When I finally got to the front, she asked me, “Little Stevie, what did you write on your paper?” I stuck out my little chest and responded with the pride of an Olympic Gold Medal winner, “I want to be on TV.” But then she confused me when she followed up with “Why did you write that on your paper?” I’m thinking, Well, isn’t that what you asked me do? but I respectfully said, “I thought that’s what you wanted us to do, so I wrote down that I want to be on TV.” My confusion turned into horror when she asked, “Do you know anybody on TV?”
“No, ma’am,” I replied.
“Has anybody in your family been on TV?”
I said again, “No, ma’am.”
She delivered her final blow when she said, “Stevie, you can’t be on TV. You take this paper home and write something more realistic and then bring it back tomorrow.”
I was angry. I didn’t understand what was going on. She asked me what I wanted to be, not what my parents did or what I saw other people do. I told her what I wanted, and she killed my dream right in front of the class. The teacher called my house before I got home, and as soon as I walked in the door, my mother asked me, “What did you do up at that school today?” I told her what happened and she said, “Boy, why didn’t you just write something that that teacher wanted on the paper?” I stood in that kitchen and couldn’t understand why my mother was so upset.
In sixth grade, I was still a little flea, dreaming and jumping at two hundred times my size. I wanted to be on TV because of Bill Cosby. When I Spy came on, the whole block would clear out just to run home and watch him. After I saw Bill Cosby, I knew I didn’t want to be an electrician, a doctor, or a lawyer. I wanted to be funny on TV, just like him. That’s all I knew.
When my father came home, my mother told him what happened, and he said, “Well, what’s wrong with that? If that boy wants to be on TV, why can’t he write that on his paper?” My mom said, “She wants him to write something more believable.” To which he replied, “If that’s what he wants to be, then she better start believing it.” My father told me to go to my room and wait for him there.
When he finally came in, we talked about what the teacher wanted. He told me to get a new piece of paper. We agreed to write the word “policeman” on the new sheet and give it to her the next day. And then he told me to do something that changed my life forever. He said, “Steve, take out that first paper you wrote, put it in your top drawer, and every morning before you go to school and every night before you go to sleep, you read that paper and you believe that one day you will be on TV.”
Now when you turn on your TV, seven days a week, Little Stevie is on TV. I didn’t allow one lady in the sixth grade with her limited expectations to affect me. I admit it was damaging to me for some time, but I learned how to keep the dream alive.
In one day, someone tried to put the lid on my dreams, and hours later my father blew the lid off for good. At the time, I didn’t realize just what my daddy did for me. Parents can be some of the biggest lid droppers by placing limitations on their children. But you have to take the lid off—no matter who put it on or how long it has been there.
Here are some ways you can tell if the lid is still on in your life:
• If you’re not excited about waking up in the morning
• If you’re sitting around every day bored out of your mind
• If you have time to do everything that anyone asks you to do
• If you have time to watch all of your scheduled TV programs every week and not miss an episode
• If you’re getting plenty of sleep
• If your dreams make sense to everyone around you
• If you can achieve your dreams by yourself
If you recognized any of these behaviors in yourself, or said yes as you read the list, you have to take the lid off your life and start living your dream.