Taking Mohammed beyond the mountain, to the moon

by Susannah Grant posted on 21 May 2020

Mohammed being carried to the mountain as it didn´t go to him

They say “If the mountain doesn´t come to Mohammed then he must go to the mountain. For many of us, once we settled into the rhythm of confinement we started to take a fresh look around our immediate vicinity or even deep within ourselves which often in turn, triggered a deep-seated desire to implement some form of change.

If you want something badly enough you can either wait for the “perfect” opportunity to present itself to you (and recognise it when it does) or be proactive and force the issue as Mohammed did. Maybe your business needs to diversify, your parents or children need some different level of support, you need some more ME time or you´d like to be an entrepreneur.

Lucid Moonshot thinking has created businesses such as Microsoft, Uber and Google

But how does one start? By taking a blank piece of paper and writing down a list of crazy ideas until one of them appears less crazy than the others. Don´t let the realms of feasibility hold you back. Once you´ve approached this task with a can-do mindset, even if you don´t know how to implement your ideas at this point, you´ll be astounded at the list of potential solutions you come up with. Only once you´ve filled up your paper do you start to filter. Some of the most courageous, radical ideas have been described as Moonshots and these have propelled Mohammed to much higher heights than his original mountain.

Man smashes through barriers

The term, Moonshots was coined in 1961 when JFK announced he was going to put a man on the moon, without knowing exactly how he was going to achieve it. We all have our own individual dreams, some are easily within our reach, whilst others are distant “ideal world” scenarios that we´d like to achieve but are often forgotten as more easily achievable gains are prioritised. Now that our diaries are clearer of social engagements and non-essential errands we can carve out some time for self-contemplation and dust off our own individual mini moonshots. Please share any I can mention in subsequent weeks in the comments section or via your area coordinator.

Here is mine, many years ago when I was a frequent business traveller and women´s business attire was more formal, I would spend endless hours on a Sunday night compressing myriad suits and changes of clothes into hand luggage for a 2-3 night trip away. This led me to ponder the practicality of reversible garment; jackets that could mix and match with different trousers depending which way round you wore them. That way you could halve the garments you needed to pack.

INCnewcommers Madrid
Double trouble on skates

In addition, I wanted to produce attachable accessories of butterflies, flowers, animals or shapes that you could att ach to shoes, belts, boots, handbags or even jacket lapels to suit your mood, occasion or time of day without having to purchase separate items. And all this before the era in which “sustainable” became the watchword on everyone´s lips.

My flatmate at the time happened to a be a fashion student and she advised me to work up a prototype and tout it round the fashion houses. Unfortunately I listened to my inner critic and the erstwhile mockery of my school sewing teacher who had to staple my wrap-around skirt onto my knickers behind the scenes of our annual school fashion show because I hadn´t sewed on the waistline securely. The disappointing reality was that the reversible clothes idea was buried at the back of my wardrobe and I bought a bigger suitcase.

Two for the price of one

However, based on the exponential design concept of today´s driverless cars maybe I should be inventing clothes that walk by themselves into washing machine. I look forward to hearing about your own dreams.

What are yours?
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