How Captain Underpants helped me to dream BIGGER!

13 Jul How Captain Underpants helped me to dream BIGGER!

Before author Dav Pilkey hit it big with kid’s books like Captain Underpants and Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot… he was working at Pizza Hut.

In fact, his real name is “Dave” but when the manager of his Pizza Hut went to make his name badge, he ran out of label-maker tape so his name tag came out as just “Dav.”

It stuck.

Well, as Dav was schleping pizzas he dreamed of writing and selling kid’s books… lots of them.

But he didn’t ask “How can I sell a bunch of books?”

The question he asked himself was… “How can I have fun writing and selling kid’s books?”

Good question.

Now you might be thinking “It’s kid’s books. How can you NOT have fun?” But have you looked at the shelves of kid’s books lately? Let’s just say that you can see numerous examples of authors that aren’t having fun.

Bottom line? Dav’s question paid off.

Dav has sold over 10 million copies of his books and he continues to add titles and games to his list of successes.

Not only does he continue to churn our best sellers… but he’s actually having fun as he does it!

This got me thinking.

What if we asked that question of ourselves today?

“How could I have fun as I ________________ today?”

I know… I know… it might appear to be harder to ask this question of yourself, if you’re in a job you don’t love or if you know that it’s going to be a stress-filled day of meetings or if your business is hurting.

But, what if?

What if we asked that question of ourselves? What if we, like Dav, asked the question as we were at work today? And/or… what if we asked that question of ourselves as we were walking out our BIG dream?

I recently spoke on this topic at a weekend conference and a person in the audience raised her hand and said, “I’m going to ask this question now.” She continued, “Mine will be ‘How can I have fun while I search for a job?'”

The thing I loved about her response was that she was smiling a BIG smile as she said it. It was almost like she couldn’t help herself. She just had to smile. Yup. She understood the power of this question. She got it.

How about you?

Where could you be asking this question today?

How can I have fun as I…

• attend training?
• lead my team meeting?
• process the report?
• call on that customer?
• work on my business plan?

Why not give it a try?

Give it 2 minutes and see what you come up with. It might be simple. It might be subtle. But think what it could do for your ability to be a little more creative… laugh a bit more… and to have a little fun.

Let us know how it goes!