There is a story that I read about a pious, poor Italian man who every morning goes to church to pray to God and ask if you could please win the lottery. This goes on for years until, one day, God finally talks to him and tells him to buy a lottery ticket. In my experience, many of us want things or outcomes without “buying a ticket”. You can’t get the exciting role at a company if you don’t apply for the job. You don’t experience exciting visits to remote places if you don’t book the trip. You don’t build a following on social media if you don’t publish stuff that people can see. In order to get what you want, you need to take the necessary steps to even creating the possibility of getting it. It often goes wrong in two places: lack of specificity in the goal setting and a lack of willingness to put in the work, i.e. buy the ticket. So, as a reflection for today: what is your big goal that you long to accomplish? And once you are clear on that, did you buy a ticket?