What’s Your Moonshot?

Why do we need to be bolder with our ideas and braver with our actions to create a different world?

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“Anything is possible. Problems are solvable. And we can create an exciting and abundant future for the good of all humankind.”

— Naveen Jain —

I’ve been thinking a lot about moonshots lately. I think by now most of us have an idea of what a moonshot is. But in case you don’t, here’s a nice definition from Merriam-Webster’s dictionary which also explains how the concept has evolved over time:

While ‘moonshot’ originally meant “long shot,” it’s increasingly being used to describe a monumental effort and a lofty goal — in other words, a “giant leap.”

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Naveen Jain wrote a book on the topic of moonshots and has built his career — not to mention his empire — on taking his own moonshots.

I’m in the midst of taking Jain’s quest on Mindvalley at the moment. In the quest he provides his own definition of moonshots:

Moonshots are these audacious ideas that on the surface look like they’re impossible to do, very difficult to do, but these are the ideas [that] if successful can help billions of people live a better life.

Jain argues that if others don’t think your idea is crazy, then it’s not a moonshot. For moonshots are truly audacious ideas — at least for those of who still see the world as finite (more on that later).

Moonshot thinking: Shoot for the moon and you just might land on the stars

To even conceive of a moonshot, we need to believe that achieving the truly audacious is possible. As the late psychologist and spiritual teacher Wayne Dyer said:

You’ll see it once you believe it.

Unless you believe it, you won’t achieve it. To create moonshots you need to think big. Jain is a huge proponent of what he calls “moonshot thinking” which, in his own words, is:

the simple belief that entrepreneurship and creativity can solve the world’s most pressing and complex challenges.

Jain has a brain that is constantly scanning the world for what’s on the horizon. Where other people see challenges, he sees opportunities.

In the quest he provides his insights on some of the challenges facing our world today which require moonshot thinking:

The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunities. If you want to create a billion-dollar company, you need to solve a hundred billion-dollar problem. And if you want to create a hundred billion dollar company, you need to solve a trillion-dollar problem. The trillion dollar problems tend to be social problems: lack of fresh water, disrupting healthcare, disrupting education, creating sustainable energy. Every one of them is a multi-trillion-dollar industry. And every one of them is ripe for disruption.

There’s no shortage of challenges in the world today. Jain argues that there are so many moonshots out there (i.e. possibilities to change the world) that each person on Earth could have their own.

What does it look like to shoot for the moon for you?

Moonshots by definition are about solving problems that help billions of people and make the world a better place. No two people look at the world in exactly the same way. So it stands to reason that our moonshots will be different.

The challenge I work on is climate change. The issue I work on within the global climate policy regime, Loss and Damage, is about addressing the impacts of climate change once they happen. The challenge is that climate change affects the world’s most vulnerable people, communities, and countries profoundly. It brings the injustices of the world together.

How to solve that conundrum? What’s at the root of it? That’s what drives me in the day-to-day.

A few years ago I was at a workshop to support vulnerable developing countries in international climate negotiations. We were discussing the change we needed to see and aspired to achieve. Ideas that were circulating included mobilizing trillions to address loss and damage on the ground and ensuring each human on Earth had the tools they need to thrive. We thought those were audacious enough. And then one person said:

What if there was no climate change?

Queue the mic drop. The room got silent. Everyone turned and stared at the person who had spoken in disbelief. Mouths open. Jaws dropped. Someone asked them to repeat what they had said. They responded:

If we’re really practicing blue sky thinking, why can’t we contemplate that there is no climate change?

I’m embarrassed to say I’d never thought of that before. Isn’t climate change a foregone conclusion? The scientific body on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that global average warming has already increased by up to 1.3°C compared to pre-industrial times.

Can we roll back time?

Well, quantum physics tells us that time is not linear and that in reality, everything is happening at once.

So technically, yes?

What I do know is that we could transform the systems that have given rise to climate change. I know for sure that we could see climate change as an opportunity to create a better world.

And I’m not alone.

Author and activist Rebecca Solnit wrote an opinion piece recently arguing exactly that and has a book called Not Too Late launching next week to tell us more about how we can transform the story of climate change from one of despair to one of possibility.

Creating a world in which climate change is seen as an opportunity to create a better world is possible. Audacious sure, but possible. That’s my moonshot. What’s yours?

From scarcity to abundance: Transforming our mindsets

One thing’s for sure if you’re going to achieve your moonshot — whatever it is — you’re going to need to think big. You’ll need a growth mindset. You must be humble and open to learning. If you want to achieve audacious things, you can’t be afraid of failure. Because at the end of the day, learning lessons from failure will only make you better.

Most importantly, you can’t achieve your moonshot if you’ve got a scarcity mindset. A scarcity mindset is like a cage. It sees resources as finite, and possibilities as limited.

It’s not your fault if you have a scarcity mindset.

Our ancestors lived in a world in which they had to constantly scan the landscape for the negative because doing so was literally a matter of survival. Tigers and other threats were lurking around every corner.

But the world has changed. To truly thrive today we must program our minds to scan the world for the positive. To see opportunities around every corner. To think that anything is possible. That’s an abundance mindset.

The world has changed and we need to help our minds catch up to it.

Transforming your scarcity mindset to one of abundance can be done with discipline in a few simple steps according to Jain. These include:

• Become aware of your thoughts and focus them on possibilities, not challenges.
• Believe tomorrow will be better than yesterday and focus your energy on making it a reality.
• Be grateful for everything going right in your life now.
• Meditate every day even for just a few minutes — it’s a game changer.

These steps might be simple but they’re not necessarily easy. If you want an abundance mindset which you will need to achieve your moonshot, you’ll have to work for it. You’ll have to be disciplined.

Jain maintains that once you’ve created an abundance mindset, “you will always think big.” He argues that once you dedicate your life to something, everything will fall in place to make it happen because “the smartest people want to work on the toughest problems.”

Transforming our audacious ideas into achievable actions

Jain believes that when we become “experts” at anything, we become useless. When we focus too much on one thing, we become what he calls an “incrementalist”, achieving only incremental change. To make things exponentially better, we need to move from industry to industry, disrupting as we go.

I work on climate policy but I love drawing on the perspectives of and bringing ideas from other fields. I love learning from entrepreneurs, artists, and folks who generally shake the world up in different ways. It’s going to be very hard to create the world we want if we stay in our silos.

Author and thought leader Matthew Syed demonstrated the danger of homophily — or interacting only with like-minded people — in his book Rebel Ideas. The premise of his book is that to curate and cultivate rebel ideas we need to be having conversations and collaborating with folks from all different walks of life.

Some of us are born disruptors. I fall in that category. If you’re not, how do you become a disruptor? Well, you need to become a dabbler in many things. You might become a specialist in something, but you must know what’s going on elsewhere. You must commit to being a lifelong learner.

For me, that means reading books and listening to podcasts about entrepreneurs, and having lots of conversations with artists. For everyone, it will look a little different, but the point is don’t stay in your silo. You can’t create and you definitely can’t achieve moonshots that way.

Imagine the new reality: Seeing the world we want in our mind’s eye.

An important part of first finding and then achieving our moonshots is visualization. We must spend time imagining the world we want to create “in vivid colour”.

And then you must start working towards making your moonshot happen. And don’t forget, if it’s not scary, it’s not a moonshot. When we do anything audacious, we’re going to be scared. That comes with the territory.

But what’s worse, failing or not having tried in the first place? And what’s the worst that could happen? As Norman Vincent Peale said:

Shoot for the moon. If you miss it, you will still land among the stars.

So go ahead and dream, conjure an audacious idea, and make it happen. The world needs your moonshot.

For more on my work on global climate policy find me here.

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