Failing Forward, Seeing the Star, Taking the Next Step

 Randy Pausch achieved so many of his childhood dreams because he combined joyful curiosity with disciplined persistence. He didn’t romanticize success—he engineered it. When Disney rejected him, he reframed the “brick wall” as a filter that keeps out people who don’t want it badly enough. He also invested in people: mentors, teams, and students. That mix—persistence, reframing setbacks, and building real relationships—created tailwinds that carried him toward zero-gravity flights, Imagineering projects, and transformative teaching. His line, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want,” captures it: he harvested learning from every miss and used it as fuel for the next attempt.

Dreaming matters because it gives us a star to steer by. Without a clear “why,” the day-to-day becomes random. With a dream, we can choose steppingstones that compound—skills, relationships, and habits that point in one direction. Dreaming isn’t about fantasy; it’s about setting a faithful, testable hypothesis for your life. Then, as Tom Kelley says, you “treat life as an experiment”: run small bets, learn fast, and keep moving.

One of my own childhood dreams was to build a place where families could slow down and reconnect—somewhere simple, close to nature, and welcoming to faith. That dream has grown into my current #1 priority: a family-focused eco-resort in Angola. I believe it’s achievable because I’m approaching it with an experimental, stepping-stone mindset. In the next 12 months I’ll interview families and community leaders, run pop-up weekend retreats in rented venues, and measure whether the experience truly strengthens connection at home (repeat intent, stories of change, NPS). If the pilots resonate, I’ll secure land or a lease, raise an impact-aligned seed round, and phase the build. If capital takes longer, Plan Z is to keep hosting paid pop-ups, grow a waitlist, and pre-sell founders’ weekends.

Ethical guardrails will keep me on course: people over profit, radical transparency with guests and partners, fair treatment and living wages for staff, and environmental stewardship for the land. Those “I will never…” lines matter as much as any spreadsheet.

Randy Pausch reminded me that the point isn’t just to achieve dreams but to live in a way that invites them. So I’m choosing to fail forward, to keep my eyes on the star, and to take the next right step—one experiment at a time.


References

  • BYU-Idaho Online Learning. (n.d.). Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture (video).

  • BYU-Idaho Online Learning. (2008). Tom Kelley, Treat Life as an Experiment (video).

  • Sandefer, J. (n.d.). Stars & Steppingstones: Some choices only come around once. Acton Foundation.

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