In the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” (EEAAO), the main characters discover that they can tap into alternate universes where they have different capabilities, and bring those capabilities to this universe.

If you are a kung fu master in another universe, for example, you could use that here as well.

I watched the movie and didn’t think, “What if that were true?”

I thought, “Finally, someone is talking about this.”

Because I have always created by becoming the person capable of doing it first. By stepping into another identity (one from a parallel universe, perhaps?) and creating from that.

Even when I didn’t realize I was doing it.

The simplest model of the universe that fits with our current understanding of quantum physics is that there are innumerable parallel universes, a multiverse, if you will, in which everything has happened that on can conceive of happening. See “Something Deeply Hidden” by Sean Carroll for a layperson’s explanation of this.

Yet most physicists dismiss this because it does not match up with our everyday experience. In effect, they want to make the world more complicated to keep themselves small.

But what if the simplest explanation is that yes, you are capable of anything?

I choose to believe in the multiverse, and my ability to influence the parts that I experience. Not because I know it is true, but because believing it, believing that I have already accomplished everything, enables me to create a version of myself that has the courage to take on my biggest dreams. Like supporting founders at every stage of creating their dreams, and creating a company to do that at a larger scale.

What do you choose to believe, not because it is true, but because it is useful?

So often, the answer is exactly the opposite of what you think it is.

The founder who wanted to stay “on top of” things actually needed to build a team and give up control to grow.

The founder who couldn’t find good people didn’t actually want them (because that would mean the founder wasn’t necessary).

The biggest provocation is the one that is least obvious (until you see it for yourself).

That you are creating both yourself and your world. And that changing either starts with you.

I was talking to a founder yesterday and asked him what he thought made him different. Why he was taking the road less travelled, toward starting his own thing rather than becoming an employee of someone else.

He talked a bit about being stubborn, about not being good at following orders, about instinctively challenging authority.

But then he got quiet.

“I guess if I could identify one thing, it’s that I have this faith that I can figure things out.”

YES.

There is a huge difference between having knowledge and having the capacity to know.

Between what you have already learned and knowing that you can learn.

YOU are not what you have learned. YOU are the inherent capacity to learn.

YOU are not your history. YOU are the capacity to create your future.

Any future you want.

Knowing that, knowing that you are not limited by, or beholden to, what has happened to you, what you have done, the choices you used to make, what do you choose next?

What will you choose to create when you finally see you have that choice?

One of the reasons I like working with founders is that their drives, their desires, are very similar to my own.

To do something that is important.

To have an impact.

To be true to their values and vision rather than someone else’s.

To make the world a better place.

To provide generously for themselves and others in the process.

But our society, our culture, both glamorizes and ruthlessly punishes founders.

“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers,” John D. Rockefeller famously said while he was helping to create our public education system.

Founders are thinkers. The people who see the need for something different and then commit to creating it.

Founders are the people who instinctively question reality rather than comply with it.

Founders must constantly commit to their vision while everyone around them challenges them, telling them it isn’t practical, it will never work, they need a backup plan.

Founders must lead rather than follow.

Founders make horrible employees. They question everything.

Being a founder is not for the faint of heart. It will tempt you and then test you. You will learn more about yourself in the process than you ever wanted to.

But if it is in your blood, nothing else will satisfy you.