Are You Living Risklessly?
I hope you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.
Neil Gaiman
It seems like there is a new tragedy every day.
Soon we will be reluctant to leave our homes.
Not that we are free of risks even there.
Life is filled with risk.
Some of those risks seem bigger than they are, airflight for example.
Other risks are greater than we realize, such as a diet of highly processed food.
One risk that is completely overlooked is the risk of playing it safe.
We sanitize our homes so thoroughly that our children have weak immune systems.
We invest our money in a savings account that earns less than the rate of inflation.
We avoid challenging assignments at work because we are afraid of making mistakes.
Progress requires risk.
Thomas Edison famously failed thousands of times before he discovered how to make a commercially viable light bulb.
Elon Musk had some spectacular failures before he was able to catch and reuse booster rockets for SpaceX.
Not only do mistakes let us know what doesn’t work and what changes need to be made for success, but mistakes often lead to accidental discoveries.
Christopher Columbus discovered the Western Hemisphere because he miscalculated the circumference of the earth.
Post-it® Notes were the lucky result of attempts “to develop bigger, stronger, tougher adhesives.”
Not all risks lead to success, but all success requires taking risks.
The African proverb says it this way, “Not everyone who chased the zebra caught it, but he who caught it, chased it.”
If we chase the zebra and fail, the critics may try to embarrass us.
But they aren’t the ones who make us feel embarrassed.
We let ourselves feel that way because we worry too much about what others think.
If we are trying to accomplish something worthwhile, we know we have nothing to be ashamed of when we make honest mistakes.
The critics in the bleachers don’t matter.
We simply learn from our mistakes and keep trying.
Now get out there and make some spectacular mistakes today.
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