Imagine you have a rope that extends in both directions farther than you can see. We’ll say that this rope is time. In front of you is a dot, hardly visible in your line of sight. That dot will be your life. From this distance, the dot seems kind of insignificant. If you stepped a few paces back, you wouldn’t be able to see it. And compared to the rope, it's hard to imagine that the dot affects the expanse at all. It could not even exist, and it wouldn’t make a difference.

If this illustration sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a modified version of the original by Francis Chan who used a rope to talk about life on Earth and eternity. While it serves a great purpose for other worldly matters, I’m going to bring it down to ground level for the sake of this conversation.

For our dot on the rope, that’s how a lot of people I know in my college classes view their lives, and frankly, it’s a problem. I know too many college students, socially considered the crème de la crop, who don’t value themselves as much as they should.

You can almost hear them say it when they apologize for minor mistakes no one noticed or how they say they’re only “kind of” good at something. When in reality, they’re phenomenal at it. Even if they’re willing to agree and say that they’re smart, there’s a good chance that they wouldn’t say that they’re going to change the world.

I actually once knew a guy who came up with an invention of how to revolutionize hair coloring in salons into a more efficient process with more accuracy and precision. It was brilliant, and I can almost guarantee, as a cosmetology license holder, that it would have made him millions. The problem was, he never pursued that idea because he had classes to worry about and grades to make and at the end of it all, he didn’t believe that he could do it.

Call it modesty. Call it humility. Call it whatever you want to call it, but it’s certainly not doing any of us any favors. Why? Because the kind of apathy that makes people believe that they are a product of their time rather than the makers of their own destiny and stops them from trying to make a mark in our world. They will take a job to stay afloat for the moment, not innovate to work towards a better tomorrow because they don’t think they have what it takes to make a difference.

Look, I’ve never met someone who was starting a business that wasn’t optimistic about it and that didn’t have that moment where they thought that maybe they could make a difference. Maybe the difference was only in the thickness of their wallet, but a difference none-the-less.

Sure they weren’t a Picasso or a Lincoln or even a Julia Child, but to make that jump you had to think, “Well, maybe being John Smith is just enough.” My point is, no one went into a life-long pursuit like a business expecting it to fail. As cheesy as it sounds, at some point you have to take a leap of faith in yourself.

I’m going to go back to the rope thing for a minute. If you set fire to that dot and you burned it out, would it make a difference to the rope as a whole? If you whittled it thin, would you notice? What about if you just cut it out? The answer to all of these is yes, of course you would. The rope would never be the same.

Or maybe you’re a skeptic. I don’t know. Maybe you think it might make a weak spot, but when you step back, the rope is still relatively unchanged.

Let’s take it a step further then. What if there were 20 million dots that decided to do the same? You’d see the rope begin to look a lot like Swiss cheese, and at 20 million holes relatively close together on the rope, it’s hard to tell whether there would be rope left at that point at all. There are 20 million college students in the United States alone.

I grew up hearing, “the children are the future,” but it's tough to see our metaphorical future stuck in neutral or potentially looking like the Grand Canyon, but I know it’s happening.

Look, I’m not advocating for big-headedness, but I am advocating for self-worth. I know it’s easier said than done, and I know that's by far not the only barrier we have to doing great big feats in this world we live in, but we have to start somewhere. Yes, there are benefits to being realistic, but if we can even hope to change our reality, maybe we have a shot at making some ideas come to life. Build the software, send in the manuscript, gather the troops.

Do it for you and everyone else that thinks they’re just another dot.

We need to believe in each other more and support our (hopefully) bigger and brighter future. However, the real challenge is that we need to believe in and support ourselves. Since I believe in leading by example, I want you to know if you're reading this that you're worthy and capable of greatness and I truly believe that you can help build a better tomorrow.