You Have To Risk To Succeed - The Shot Not Taken

There is a great truth among those that have been successful.  One must take a risk to succeed.  The safe road is too popular.  Thus, most people take it, and you will travel a path of high traffic.  The nature of success in a noticeable way is that you are among a minority of the population.  For example, we can all tie our shoes, and most take a common path.  That is why no one talks about their success in tying shoes.  I guess it is important to note I am talking about Success as a significant achievement, not simply completion or avoiding failure.

There is an investment required for almost any success.  Likewise, we can lose what we invest, whether time, money, or relationships.  That equates to risk.  While we can mitigate risk, we can never eliminate it completely.  Unfortunately, it is hard to argue that we do not gain larger success without a corresponding risk.  Therefore, we have to risk to succeed in a meaningful way.  That gets us to the point of this story.  We have to try out an idea if we are ever going to take advantage of it.

The road of life is littered with ideas, some brilliant, that never saw the light of day.  Some genius got so far as to think about how that idea could change the world and then let it die a horrible death.  No one will come to you,  pluck out your good ideas and implement them.  Thus, we have to take a step (or leap) of faith in ourselves and take a shot at making the idea a reality.  That can be risky.  However, you have to take a risk to succeed.

If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."