Persistence Unlimited Personal Productivity Tips

Advantages Of Acting Over Being Careful

Posted under Goals and Goal Setting, Motivation

“The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch.”
-Jim Rohn

Are you a person who takes action or do you simply watch?

Fact is, you can read all the books in the library on your chosen subject, but until you do something, you haven’t yet learned.

Being a “doer” has its privileges. Sure, there are plenty of times you can fall. But falling gives education too. If you’ve ever been hiking, you likely appreciated the hiker who went before you and warned you that a bridge was out. Yes, he failed to cross the gorge, but what a wonderful wisdom he gave you.

I know some people who are afraid of their own shadows. They are petrified to take a risk - why do anything if you might fail? As a result their results are only average. They never go anywhere. Here’s a hint, you’ve got to move forward to go somewhere. You have to risk getting out on that road and driving - even though 30,000 are killed on the highways each year.

So what if you try and fail, try again and fail? Then what? Well that depends. If you are not adjusting your actions, then you are not taking enough risks. Repeating the same behaviors hoping for a different result has been called insanity.

But what if people laugh? What if I invest in my own business and it fails and people laugh?

Well, you’ll have to toughen up. What difference does it make if a small person laughs at you? Small people laugh at me all the time. Recently, one fearful ‘leader’ laughed at me for running such a “small” company. I quietly let her laugh, secretly knowing I made double her salary. It isn’t fun to have to tolerate smallness, but if my life was dictated by people who laughed at me, I wouldn’t have ever made it past the 6th grade.

How do you become tough?

If you want to build a tough skin, take some risks. Do something! I read someplace that if a human breaks a bone, it grows back at double the strength and it will never break in the same place twice. There is some debate over that theory, but it is a good visual for what happens when you take risks. If you risk and fail then you grow back double the strength you were before.

Nowhere else is this more obvious than entrepreneurship. The person who risks their own money to start a business gains more than a business degree worth of knowledge very quickly. If it is your money, then you don’t want to waste it. Through your business you learn how to multiply your money. You learn what works and what doesn’t.

But if you are in a failing business that doesn’t mean continue failing. Take your education and start something else.

Doing puts you in an enviable position. If you have done something or taken a risk - nobody can take that experience away from you.

I learned some of my best lessons by starting businesses that didn’t succeed. Some of my creations from years ago didn’t sell, some just didn’t have a market. I had to be happy that I gained an education. I learned valuable skills such as advertising, marketing, law and accounting. I learned how to set up credit card terminals, procure business telephone lines, how to do business taxes (what could be written off and what couldn’t).

At the time, the education principle wasn’t so reassuring. Closing the doors on a business is painful. Gaining more smarts doesn’t feel like a great trade off.

But fast forward a decade and something interesting happened. With the explosion of the Internet it turns out products from my former business now have a market. Who would have thunk it? I thought I had failed? The business had closed.

But as alluded to before, taking risks and failing brings you closer to success. In my case, what was a disappointment of my past is now the success of my present day.

It’s like the old saying “It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved before.” People who fear starting a relationship because they fear they might lose it, never experience the joy and happiness of sharing their lives with another person. And what happens if you lose your love? Well, that happens to us all - I think. You learn. You become more aware of what type of mate you are looking for. You gain relationship skills for your next love. You get to start over with a new education.

If You Have to Start Over, Do It!

In the case when you do have to start over, it’s important that you do. What’s sad is the broken heart that remains broken forever. A young man or woman who never gets past their first experience being “dumped” and lives a life of loneliness to avoid the risk of feeling the pain again? That’s a sad outcome. It is much better to concentrate on the love you want than the love you don’t have.

Starting over doesn’t have to be horrible.

A fresh start can mean freedom to try new things. It can mean new dreams, new passions, new horizons to aim for. Again, it’s important that you do start over when something goes wrong.

By doing, you become the envy of the masses who only watch.

-Brad Isaac

Also See:

• Risk: Your secret success weapon
• Learning from Example: The “life destroying” small business plan
• Are You Not Setting Personal Goals Due To Uncertainty?
• Overcoming Failure
• Diversify Your Investments by Starting a Side Business