To go up, you must first go down. The first time I heard that statement, I thought it was odd, and more than a bit counterproductive. Why would you have to go down first, before you attempted to go up? At the time, I didn’t understand the importance of a foundation when building a structure.
Derived from the Latin word fundus (bottom), the term foundation has historically represented the groundwork required for both physical structures and abstract systems or ideas. It is, in essence, the essential, immovable base supporting the entire weight of the structure or concept.
In construction, a foundation is the lowest, load-bearing part of a building. It’s the starting point of erecting a structure. It is typically located below ground, out of sight. The foundation supports the entire weight of the structure that sits upon it. It anchors the structure to solid ground, providing stability and strength.
More importantly, the foundation dictates the upper limits of how high a structure can reach. It determines the height and weight limitations, as well as size and structural restrictions.
The foundation serves as the final arbitrator of growth and capacity.
It serves as a limiter of what’s possible.
The depth of a foundation is determined based on soil bearing capacity, the structural load of the structure to be built, and environmental factors like the frost line. Key considerations include reaching stable, non-compressible soil and ensuring the foundation is deep enough to prevent settlement or frost heave.
Remember, the foundation dictates the upper limits of how high a structure can reach. It serves as the final arbitrator of growth. Let me share a couple of examples.
The foundation depth for a typical two-story house ranges from 5 to 7 feet, depending on soil, climate, and structural requirements. Standard practice requires a minimum of 24-36” of reinforced concrete footings to ensure stability and structural load-bearing capacity. In colder regions, the foundation must go deeper than the frost line to prevent the upward displacement of soil in freezing conditions, known as frost heave, that can lift concrete and crack foundations.
By comparison, the foundation of One World Trade Center in New York City is roughly 110 feet deep at its base. The design utilizes a robust concrete core, up to 2 feet thick, surrounded by a perimeter steel frame, creating a secure foundation system. 187 feet of reinforced concrete was then added to the base to support the building’s extreme vertical load and provide enhanced structural stability.
Remember, the foundation dictates the upper limits of how high a structure can reach. It serves as the final arbitrator of growth and capacity.
A foundation is also an underlying basis or principle. Like a building, a foundation is a statement providing the necessary support, stability, and structure to an idea, argument, system, or process. It serves as the hidden groundwork that holds up the “superstructure” of the concept or idea.
The foundation serves as the final arbitrator of growth and capacity.
It serves as a limiter of what’s possible.
So, what does a foundation have to do with success? Turns out, a lot.
A foundation acts as the structural base upon which long-term success is derived. It ensures stability, sustainability, and instills a sense of purpose.
For personal success, a solid foundation starts with defining a vision, cultivating a positive mindset, setting goals, and developing key skills. It also involves building character and self-awareness and fostering resilience to withstand the challenges you will face along the way. Your foundation supports what you’re building, providing a stable platform that sustains your momentum as you keep reaching upward.
In his classic book, “The Magic of Thinking Big,” David Schwartz challenges his readers to shift their mindset from thinking small to thinking big. He emphasizes that belief and positive habits are the keys to reaching goals in every area of your life. David Schwartz takes his readers through a step-by-step process to establish a firm foundation upon which big thinking can build the life of your dreams.
Thinking big is important if you truly want to experience success at a massive level, but there is a foundational lesson I want to make sure you don’t miss. (Sorry, pun intended.)
The bigger your dream, the bigger the foundation you need to support and sustain it.
How big is your dream?
If you’ve got to go down to go up, what is foundationally required to support and sustain your big dream? How deep do you need to dig to ensure what you’re planning to build has a substructure in place that’s firm, solid, immovable, and capable of bearing the weight of what you’re planning to build?
Building a foundation is a process. It requires a plan.
Planning is the first essential step in building a foundation for success. It acts as a blueprint that defines clear and measurable goals. As you’re drafting your blueprint, you are organizing your thinking, anticipating obstacles, determining necessary resources, and identifying what tools are going to be needed to do the work.
In this step, you’re defining your end goal and documenting the process to build, identifying and documenting the necessary steps along the way. You’re setting deadlines and determining the resources and materials you need to succeed. You’re also identifying potential risks and creating contingency plans, just in case.
Step two in the process is preparation. This is the bridge between planning and execution. Preparation ensures you’re ready to act when the opportunity arises. In this phase of building your foundation, you’re acquiring the necessary skills, gathering the resources you need, and developing the resilience necessary to keep building, even when it gets difficult.
In this phase, you are engaging in continuous learning, developing the talent, skills, and abilities needed to succeed. You’re focused on improving the quality of your thinking, as this improves the quality of your saying, doing, becoming, and accomplishing. This is how you continually become capable of more. This builds confidence and resilience, and allows you to see and seize opportunities disguised as challenges, effectively executing your plan.
Step three is resources. This is the fuel that will propel your vision and your plan into reality. You have a plan, you’ve prepared yourself mentally and physically for the challenge, and now it is time to gather the tools, capital, and support you’ll need to execute the plan. It’s about identifying the “money, muscle, and material” needed for the job. This could be financial capital, human resources, intellectual or digital assets, or the proper allocation of time for each phase of the build.
In this step, it’s important that you not only identify but also effectively manage your assets. You must understand what you have available to work with, when it will be available, and how to optimize these resources for long-term success. It’s about leveraging resources, technology, and skills to execute efficiently so your foundation is built to last.
Step four in the process is time. The Byrds famously sang, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under earth.” Time represents the duration of the project, but also the patience that’s going to be required along the way. Why? Dedication and discipline, applied over time, are necessary to turn plans into results.
This is the persistence phase of the build. It’s where desire, determination, and discipline come together to make things happen. Time transforms dreaming into doing. This is where thinking big starts to manifest itself into tangible results.
The fifth step in building a firm foundation is people. It’s in this crucial phase of the process that you focus on engaging the right people to aid you in construction. This is where you begin to build a team that can help you do what’s required to complete your plans. In the words of my friend and mentor, Dr. John Maxwell, “One is too small a number to achieve greatness.”
This is where your ability to lead and influence others who can assist you in your journey, who share a similar passion for what you’re seeking to build, can lend their talent, skill, knowledge, and expertise to help you accomplish what you can’t on your own. This is also where your ability to equip and empower others to lead themselves well as a result of your mentorship is invaluable in fostering a culture of mutual success.
Together, you and your team not only establish a firm foundation, but also see your big dream come into its physical representation in the earth as you build your vision of the future.
Now that you know the steps to building a firm foundation for success, there’s one last thing about foundations you need to know.
Built improperly, overstressed, or overweighted, the structural integrity of a foundation can be compromised. It can shift, crack, or buckle. Early engineers learned the hard way that failing to anchor a foundation to solid ground was a disaster waiting to happen. They also learned that when foundations are built above the freeze line, water can make its way under the foundation and, upon freezing, it disrupts the integrity of the foundation and the structure upon which it sits.
If a foundation sinks unevenly, stair-step cracks in brickwork or diagonal cracks above windows and doors can appear. Excess moisture causes soil to push against foundation walls, resulting in horizontal cracking, bowing, or structural failure. Roots growing under a foundation can extract moisture, causing the soil to shrink and the foundation to settle.
Indications of structural failure can include cracks, doors and windows that stick, jam, won’t latch, or won’t close. Other visible warning signs include gaps appearing between the foundation and the structure, sloping or sagging floors, walls pulling away from ceilings or gaps in exterior brickwork.
As you’re building your success foundation, make sure you’re paying attention to the indicators of failure. For example, overinvesting in one area of personal growth while neglecting other critical areas results in lopsided growth. Also, allowing small, ignored problems or negative habits to seep into your life can erode structural stability.
Launching a project without first evaluating your foundation’s structural capacity or building before your foundation is firmly established can cause it to shift, crack, or fail. And, a failure to “count the cost” before you start to build could leave you with a strong foundation, but with insufficient resources to finish what you started.
But, there’s good news. A foundation can be fixed. It can be reinforced, realigned, or repaired. So, if you find yourself building on a weak, unstable, or lopsided foundation, take a pause and stop building. Don’t add more stress to a structure that isn’t prepared to support it.
Take the time to strengthen the substructure. Bring it up to code. Once that’s done, you can start building again, and the work will go smoother. A firm, solid, stable foundation is there to support you, not make your work harder.
Perhaps you’ve heard the parable of the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. When the storms came, the unstable sand shifted, and the poor man’s house collapsed. The wise man, who built his house on a firm, solid foundation, rode out the storm with his house unscathed.
Where you seek to build success in your life matters.
If you take the time to first establish a firm foundation, you can build bigger, higher, and faster. And even better, what you’re building will ride out the storms of life and remain unscathed.
You are building success that isn’t fleeting. You are building success that will last.
Remember, the foundation serves as the final arbitrator of growth and capacity.
It serves as a limiter of what’s possible.
A foundation acts as the structural base upon which long-term success is derived. It ensures stability, sustainability, and instills a sense of purpose.
Don’t forget that big dreams require a big foundation to support them.
Dream big, and build your foundation accordingly.
Your future success awaits.
