Take Risks, Take Chances
The reward lies beyond the fear.
Everything you want is on the other side and you are scared to cross the bridge.
Throwing yourself into the deep water
Rub a small amount of shaving cream on your bathroom mirror, then wipe it off. Congrats, no more foggy mirrors now! How many of those life hacks you have seen on social media? I have seen hundreds. But I have never seen the most important one, the actual life hack—If you are unsure of your competence in a topic or situation, commit, and figure stuff out along the way. Don’t take too much time for consideration, you will choose the easier option—to not take the opportunity. The tricky thing there is that opportunity can hide itself in the time of making the decision and will be revealed by experience after everything is over.
If I were allowed to say only one trick for your development, it would be this one 100% of the time. When I look back, every period of my major growth was sourced by that. Don’t be scared of the unknown, be scared of staying tied to what’s known well.
Is it better to ask for forgiveness than for permission? The phrase is catchy but the real answer is: it depends. What I’m sure is better is throwing yourself into deep water. Not so deep that you drown immediately, but deep enough that you need to fight for survival.
No risk, unsatisfying reward
Going into the unknown is the highly nourishing fuel for your growth.
But I’m afraid! Ok, quick exercise then:
Who’s in charge of your luck?
“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” ― Thomas Jefferson
Spoiler: you are! Cutting off extreme examples like winning the lottery or being born with no arms and legs, the amount of luck depends on how you perceive it. A lucky event for one person is an unlucky one for another and vice versa. Unlucky people think of themselves as unlucky. Lucky people think of themselves as Lucky. Unlucky people pay attention to the wrong things. Lucky people expose themselves to opportunities and take advantage of them—that’s the secret in one sentence. If you are convinced something will go wrong, it will.
Luck won’t come to your room and hand you a winning lottery ticker. You have to get out, search for opportunities, and take full advantage of them. That’s how people become lucky.
I remember the Luck perk you could level up in Fallout: New Vegas. You can level up your own luck in real life too.
Luck journal
Remember I said unlucky people pay attention to the wrong things? I have mentioned the gratitude journal multiple times on here. Why don’t do the same with luck? Try an experiment with me—from today, for 40 days write down 5 lucky things that happened to you during the day. It can be anything—finding a loose change in a winter jacket, a nice unexpected email, getting a discount, seeing this funny meme you haven’t seen in years, a video from your favorite YouTuber. Don’t be selective.
If you have trouble coming up with 5 it can be less for now. Don’t worry though, it will naturally get easier as you start paying attention to those things.
More about gratitude:
Is it better to be a pessimist or an optimist?
Being a pessimist prepares you for worst-case scenarios, so it's better—makes a lot of sense, but my faith in the truth of that sentence has faded year after year. In the modern world, the worst-case scenario is not a tiger jumping out of the bushes at you, it’s a missed deadline. Do we still need to analyze every bad scenario then?
As I said before—If you think something will go wrong, it will.
Get rid of unreasonable labels
Have you ever discovered that you are actually not that bad at something you thought you were?
Next time you catch yourself thinking “I’m bad at this”, search for the root cause—what was the experience that caused that? Did I just assume that I would be bad at this because I have some bad connections in my head to this thing that don't necessarily mean I will perform badly?
Inaction will make you miserable and unsatisfied
Whatever your endeavor, don’t stop. Explore the unknown areas, experiment, learn, try things on your own (can’t stress how important the last is). You lose only when you stop. Failing is a natural part of the process. Muscles must be damaged to regenerate stronger.
Stop coming up with reasons why you don’t have to do it today, come up with reasons why it’s worth doing today.
Also read:
Always look on the bright side of life, as sung by my favorite group of comedians.