“Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience, it is necessary for us to do the opposite; that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.”

-Leonardo da Vinci

The straight line only exists in the past. When creating something from nothing, innovators experience a storm of chaos, periodically hitting a milestone – a first customer or a round of funding. We know we can’t beat the storm, we just actively try to stay in the eye of it. Then when we reach the end, we look back and tell the story of the milestones as if the journey was a straight line. But that straight line doesn’t exist in the present or the future, it only exists in the story of the past.

To get to the destination of your dream you must rehearse, practice, experiment and try! You take the first step from a place of faith. You tell the story imperfectly, you find maybe one believer, you work on some part of the dream, you try to maintain faith, horribly. You fail, misstep and then start another cycle of practice. Screw up and then rise up, be determined to do it a little better. Use the mistakes to refine; use the successes to reinforce your journey. And with each cycle, you hit a milestone. At first, small ones, like a prototype.Maybe a cycle takes months in the beginning because you don’t recognize, understand or are resistant to the feedback you get from other people. But eventually, with practice and collaboration, you get better and the cycles get shorter and the milestones get larger- the first major investor, a large customer, a new product release.

The Tribetan Method is a practice, you realize your dream by doing something, not just by thinking about it. We count each cycle of practice as winning and inaction as a loss. Practice, rehearse, try and at the very least do faith.