There is an algorithm of sorts between hungry eyes and exceptional achievement. A correlation. As long as a person remains committed to a slightly impossible dream– to a breakthrough in the arts, business, science–that seems to be beyond their talent, knowledge, and ultimately their grasp, they have the possibility of making history. Or at the very least, of affecting positive change.

Think of the lawyers you know. The doctors. The bankers, salespeople and entrepreneurs. How many are just lawyers, doctors, bankers, salespeople and entrepreneurs….. and will always be just that. People with only a title or a profession after their names?

Virtually all of them. Why? Because they are happy being content. There is zero passion. They don’t want to breakthrough anything. They are no longer hungry, If they ever were, and without that fire in the soul that drives the great ones to walk on hot coals, to study Matisse while you are starving, to love what you do and who you are with with reckless abandon, you cannot find what all true explorers discover: that elusive joy, that impossible dream, that lies just beyond our reach.

I recall friends advising me that the happiest people are those with no dreams. No ambitions. No drive to make an impact on anything. In their small and routine lives, they are satisfied, peaceful, early to bed, early to rise. The world turns and they drive off to work, oblivious to all but the weekly report they must file with their manager. They are, I have been told, the true winners.

I have never bought that for a second. The sweet scent of a distant challenge, the call of the wild that beckons me into the jungle of the unknown, that is where the magic lies. That is where the sparks fly. That is where the volcanoes erupt.

I know there is something profound left to do. I have sucked it all in, eaten everything in sight, and still my eyes are hungry.

Carnivorous!

Mark Stevens
CEO
MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses