What if you didn’t have to be the one to achieve it all, to make it to the top, or be the solution to the problem?
What if your purpose was not to aim for, reach, and then break through your ceiling?
What if you didn’t have to be the beginning, middle and end of the story, but rather the prequel to the next instalment of the adventure?
What would life look like then?
Totally amazing. That’s how it would look.
The problem with having to be the one to make it to the top or to be the solution to the problem is that enough is never enough. Just as you think you’ve arrived, you discover there is still more to do.
And so you keep pushing. Pushing further, harder. Pushing to be bigger, better, stronger than you thought necessary.
Because the further you travelled, the more you came to realise that what you thought would be enough is not enough. If you are to be the one at the top, you need to be more than enough.
But no one is the solution. No one is the beginning, middle and end of the story. A solution, yes. A part in the story, yes. But not the solution, and definitely not the whole story.
This adventure that you find yourself in is bigger than you. It pre-dates you, and it will outlast you. It is enriched by you, but will survive without you.
Your role is to play the part you are made to play, and to play it the best way you can. To reach your ceiling, but not the ceiling.
When you reach your ceiling and depart from this adventure, that ceiling will become the floor that will be the launch pad for those who come behind you. All that you achieved, all that you created becomes the foundation for the next level of this incredible adventure.
Your responsibility is to aim not for the stars, but the floor—the floor of those who come behind you, who will pick up your baton, who will keep pushing forward.
I first understood this concept when a client of mine handed the pursuit of his vision to his son. There were no long handover speeches or gold watches. Instead, there was one simple statement: “Son, I have reached my ceiling, and now my ceiling becomes your floor.”
With those few words, a legacy was created.
It takes courage, humility and wisdom to know that you’ve been entrusted with a responsibility so vast that you can never accomplish it alone—to realise that your ceiling is not the final destination. And in that knowledge, it takes ambition to keep pursuing the dream entrusted to you.
It takes determination to pursue the creation of a world you may never see come to pass: to invest body, mind and spirit into running a race you may never finish. But it is your determination that will define your greatness and carve you out as a visionary who leaves a lasting legacy.
Your job is not to make your vision achievable; it’s to pursue it in all its fullness—whatever the cost and outcome—with no desire for accolade, but only the unshakeable focus to keep ploughing a path towards that world that not only could be, but absolutely should be.
So, hold the reins of what you’re creating loosely.
Make pride your enemy and humility your friend.
Seek wisdom from those who have gone before you, and find the hunger in those who must come after.
Because when your ceiling becomes their floor, your legacy lives on.
